IntroductionWelcome| 00:00 | An open source, state of the art,
3D graphics suite, and it works
| | 00:05 | cross-platform too?
| | 00:06 | Yes, it's true.
| | 00:07 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:11 | With over two million users, Blender
is the most popular and functional open
| | 00:15 | source 3D program in the world.
| | 00:18 | I'm Roger Wickes and welcome
to Blender Essential Training!
| | 00:20 | As a certified trainer and author of
'Digital Compositing with Blender',
| | 00:24 | I am thrilled to have the chance to get you
started on a program that I really love.
| | 00:29 | Blender puts the tools in your hands
to create 3D animations and in this
| | 00:33 | course we'll go over the essential
functions of Blender, you need to know to
| | 00:37 | get you started.
| | 00:38 | I'll be covering a lot of ground
here, starting with the all important
| | 00:42 | Blender interface.
| | 00:43 | We'll get familiar with 3D modeling
and how to use NURBS as well as the Sculpt tool.
| | 00:47 | We'll get into lighting,
light sources and shading.
| | 00:50 | Once we've got that part under our
belts, we'll spend some time learning
| | 00:53 | animation techniques.
| | 00:54 | I'll show you how to create some very
realistic stimulations and we'll get into
| | 00:58 | the details of rendering and
compositing your project for final video.
| | 01:02 | Along the way, we'll be creating our
own new animated character from scratch
| | 01:06 | and we'll call them Captain Knowledge
and even he has to visit lynda.com for
| | 01:10 | essential training.
| | 01:12 | So let's jump into a new dimension of
3D animation with Blender Essential Training.
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | Exercise files are available to
premium subscribers of lynda.com or to those
| | 00:05 | who purchase the DVD.
| | 00:07 | The Exercise Files folder will have
these subfolders numbered according to the
| | 00:12 | chapters that we'll be
going through in this title.
| | 00:14 | You will also have a library file, lib,
which contains a couple of subfolders
| | 00:20 | that I want to point out to you.
| | 00:21 | The first is the images subfolder,
which contains images that we'll be
| | 00:26 | working on and processing.
| | 00:28 | I've organized those into four
subfolders according to whether they contain
| | 00:32 | images of people, places or things
or the special garden spot in our
| | 00:36 | Sequencing chapter.
| | 00:38 | Also included are some objects that
you'll be reusing, plug-ins that will be
| | 00:44 | dynamically loaded, some rigs and
textures along with any audio that we might
| | 00:49 | want to separate out.
| | 00:51 | Feel free to explore this library and
use these assets to come up with your own
| | 00:56 | creative inspirations.
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| Using Blender's full capabilities| 00:00 | Blender is a complete package for
developing television commercials and all
| | 00:06 | sorts of video film from concept
through production to ultimately delivery
| | 00:13 | to the broadcaster.
| | 00:15 | In that respect, it started out as an
internal software product used by an
| | 00:19 | advertising agency called "Not a
Number" and was taken into the public domain
| | 00:24 | and is sponsored and distributed and
organized by the Blender Foundation out
| | 00:29 | of Amsterdam.
| | 00:31 | The product is open source and provides
a complete life cycle for starting with
| | 00:36 | your concept sketch, developing a model
of whatever you want, including text,
| | 00:43 | computer graphics and integrating live-
action plates, taking that model then and
| | 00:48 | shading it and texturing it, giving it
color, animating it and bringing it to life
| | 00:54 | and making it move and jump around
the screen as well as being able to do
| | 00:58 | some physical simulations for some very
complex interactions and bringing this
| | 01:03 | computer graphics object into
the real world, if you will.
| | 01:07 | In addition then, you can take these
models and bring them into a real time
| | 01:11 | interaction, a game environment, and
actually create games and other kinds of
| | 01:16 | instructional simulations.
| | 01:18 | Finally then, you can combine the
animations and the physical simulations
| | 01:22 | and the shading and also the actions
that are recorded from that real-time
| | 01:25 | interaction into a rendering
process where you create images of that
| | 01:31 | computer graphics reality.
| | 01:33 | You then can composite those images,
and by performing all sorts of special
| | 01:38 | effects and color corrections and blurs
and like that, to produce video strips.
| | 01:43 | Then you can bring those strips into
the Sequencer where you can then cut,
| | 01:47 | splice, fade, cross-mix and overlay all
of those different strips and computer
| | 01:54 | graphic elements together to produce
a complete video multimedia experience.
| | 02:01 | Blender is supported by a worldwide
consortium of people like myself, developers
| | 02:07 | and other interested people who use
Blender on a daily basis to produce some
| | 02:12 | absolutely stunning imagery.
| | 02:14 | Blender is supported by a
couple of key sites on the web.
| | 02:17 | We have BlenderArtists.org. That is a
non-profit organization that is hosted to
| | 02:23 | provide online forums and a gallery of
the absolute stunning imagery that is
| | 02:29 | produced by a number of great and
very talented individuals from around the world
| | 02:34 | and every major country and city there is.
| | 02:38 | There is also an online daily newspaper
called BlenderNation.com, which features
| | 02:43 | a daily news article
about BlenderNation everyday.
| | 02:48 | Here's an interview with Campbell Barton,
a person I've been privileged to work
| | 02:52 | with and he has helped me quite a
bit with all of my Python programming.
| | 02:56 | This newspaper has been in existence
for well over a year and every time some
| | 03:01 | kind of a major event occurs or a major
accomplishment happens with Blender or
| | 03:06 | related to Blender, this is the
community that both publishes and produces news
| | 03:12 | articles about Blender and how it's
being used to model and simulate and just
| | 03:18 | produce awesome video imagery.
| | 03:21 | Finally, there is BlenderArt.org, which
is an electronic magazine that features
| | 03:26 | a number of issues and each issue is
just packed with a number of articles and
| | 03:32 | very interesting techniques on how to
use Blender and some of the stunning and
| | 03:37 | absolute fantastic stuff that has
been done with Blender in the past.
| | 03:42 | There is also model repositories that
you can go to, to get models that have
| | 03:47 | already been prebuilt by other people.
| | 03:49 | There is a Blender Materials available
from Blender.org, which is a library of
| | 03:55 | reusable materials and settings
for simulating all sorts of different
| | 03:59 | materials and of course the code
and all different extensions to
| | 04:03 | the code is also available.
| | 04:05 | So that's just a quick overview of the
capabilities of Blender and the kind of
| | 04:09 | things that can be done with Blender
as well as some of the support that's
| | 04:13 | available to you as a new user.
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| Getting and installing Blender| 00:00 | So, how do we get started with Blender?
| | 00:02 | Well, the easiest way to get
Blender is simply download it for free
| | 00:06 | from Blender.org.
| | 00:07 | All you need to do is go to the
website and click on the Download button
| | 00:11 | that's right there.
| | 00:13 | That brings you to a page where
there is every major platform supported.
| | 00:18 | You can get Blender.
| | 00:19 | You can look at the documentation.
| | 00:21 | You can actually get the source code to
Blender and compile it on your own machine.
| | 00:25 | On this page is Blender for 32 bits
and 64 bits, Linux in 32 bits or 64
| | 00:32 | bits, the Mac OS X versions, as well
as high-end graphics work stations from
| | 00:38 | Solaris and Irix.
| | 00:42 | If you do get the Windows version,
you will need to download and install
| | 00:47 | the Microsoft Visual C++
Redistributable Package from Microsoft,
| | 00:53 | if you're not running Vista.
| | 00:55 | If you're running XP or Windows 98 or
some other older version of Windows,
| | 01:00 | you'll have to get this Visual C++.
| | 01:02 | Blender cannot redistribute it,
since it is a proprietary package
| | 01:06 | from Microsoft.
| | 01:07 | Once you do that, you simply run the
installer, make a few easy choices about
| | 01:12 | where to put your custom folders and
your custom directories and like that, and
| | 01:16 | you're off and running.
| | 01:18 | The other place to get Blender from for
free is to download a customized build
| | 01:24 | from GraphicAll.org.
| | 01:27 | If you go in here, you have first of
all, the latest builds, any latest bug
| | 01:31 | fixes or experimental builds that
people are trying out, feel free to
| | 01:37 | download those.
| | 01:39 | Also, down here at the bottom of the page,
you can get optimized builds based on
| | 01:43 | the actual PC chip that's inside your PC.
| | 01:47 | Even if it's a Windows PC, you may have
an AMD Quad Core or an Intel Quad Core.
| | 01:53 | That is able to process much faster
and those are called SSE3s or SSE2s.
| | 02:00 | If you have that kind of chip in your
machine, you can download this particular
| | 02:05 | customized optimized build and Blender
will run like 30-40-50% faster when doing rendering.
| | 02:13 | That's how you can get Blender and
download and install Blender, get up and
| | 02:18 | running as fast as possible.
| | 02:19 | The other item to note is that Blender
uses the Python language, which is an
| | 02:24 | open source language for extending
and running what's called scripts.
| | 02:30 | So that's a very end-user-friendly
language that you can program Blender in and
| | 02:37 | program against Blender and cause
Blender to do all sorts of neat and wonderful
| | 02:40 | things which you can actually
customize and extend Blender.
| | 02:44 | When you install Blender,
you'll be brought to the Python site.
| | 02:47 | It's not absolutely required that
you have the latest and greatest
| | 02:51 | Python language installed.
| | 02:54 | In fact, you need to install Python 2.5,
but it's always a good thing to have,
| | 03:00 | in case you do start
getting into running scripts.
| | 03:02 | You won't be able to run them unless
you have the Python language installed
| | 03:06 | on your computer.
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| Mouse and keyboard differences on the Mac | 00:00 | Blender works equally well on Linux,
Windows and Mac machines. In general,
| | 00:05 | transitioning from one operating system
to another is seamless as long as you are
| | 00:08 | working with a three-button mouse.
| | 00:10 | For Mac users, working with a single-
button Apple Mighty Mouse, I strongly
| | 00:15 | recommend that you change your mouse
settings so that your mouse operates as a
| | 00:19 | three-button mouse while working with Blender.
| | 00:21 | To do this, go to Apple > System
Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse and select
| | 00:27 | the Mouse tab.
| | 00:28 | Make a few simple changes to your mouse.
| | 00:31 | Change the Dashboard area to Button 3
and change the right area of the mouse
| | 00:39 | to Secondary Button. Keep the left
side set to Primary Button and then close this out.
| | 00:44 | You will now have a mouse with a
Left Mouse Button, Middle Mouse Button
| | 00:48 | and Right Mouse Button and can
follow along with me using the commands
| | 00:51 | that I'm giving you.
| | 00:52 | Also, once your mouse has these LMB,
MMB and RMB designations, it's easy to
| | 00:58 | reference the mouse actions by
command using the Blender Help directory.
| | 01:02 | Go to Help > Hotkey and MouseAction
Reference and select the Mouse tab.
| | 01:08 | You'll see all the Mouse actions
listed along with the appropriate LMB, MMB
| | 01:13 | and RMB designations.
| | 01:15 | If you ever find yourself in a
situation where you must use a single-mouse
| | 01:19 | button such a trackpad on a laptop,
on a MacBook, you can still navigate in
| | 01:23 | Blender by using certain keys in
tandem with the single-mouse button.
| | 01:26 | For example, to rotate your view in
Blender, you would normally click-and-drag
| | 01:31 | the middle-mouse button.
| | 01:32 | On a MacBook, you would add the
Option key to that mouse action.
| | 01:36 | So by holding down the Option key and by
clicking-and-dragging this single-mouse
| | 01:40 | button, you can rotate your view in Blender.
| | 01:43 | On a Windows laptop, use the Alt key.
| | 01:46 | The same goes for zooming your view.
| | 01:48 | With a three-button mouse, you would
normally mouse-wheel or hold down the Ctrl
| | 01:51 | key in tandem with the middle-mouse button.
| | 01:54 | On a trackpad, however, you hold down
the Ctrl and Option keys together to zoom
| | 01:58 | your view on a MacBook.
| | 02:00 | When using a regular three-button mouse
or one with a mouse wheel, make sure to
| | 02:04 | configure your mouse button correctly.
| | 02:07 | It's recommended that you use a scroll wheel
| | 02:09 | and Logitech mouse, as it's very easy
to configure and use with Blender.
| | 02:13 | So as you can see, Blender is quite
versatile and can be used on both Mac
| | 02:17 | and Windows and Linux machines,
desktops and laptops alike with a few simple
| | 02:21 | considerations given to choosing a
mouse and selecting and configuring your
| | 02:25 | mouse preferences.
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|
|
1. The Blender InterfaceBlender oddities| 00:00 | One of the most common complaints about
Blender is that it just doesn't look like
| | 00:05 | any other application I use,
and it doesn't just divide up.
| | 00:08 | It doesn't have floating panels.
| | 00:10 | It's just weird.
| | 00:11 | There are certain things about Blender
that I admit, they are strange, but
| | 00:17 | you have to just understand that it
was developed over a dozen years ago.
| | 00:22 | The original interface concept and the
way it works was developed back under the
| | 00:26 | UNIX and Linux environment.
| | 00:28 | So it doesn't look like a Windows application.
| | 00:31 | It doesn't look like an Apple application.
| | 00:34 | It looks like itself.
| | 00:35 | So it's kind of a unique beast in that respect.
| | 00:39 | How everything is arranged with all of
these windowpanes, things are strange.
| | 00:43 | They may not be familiar to you.
| | 00:46 | The other complication is that it is a
3D graphics image manipulation program
| | 00:51 | and that's just a very complex topic to
try to embody and codify in a program.
| | 00:58 | There are lots and lots of different
features and functions that you're not used to,
| | 01:03 | if you're just used to doing word
processing or working with a spreadsheet.
| | 01:06 | There is no similar metaphor for
Blender and what it's trying to do.
| | 01:12 | So in doing this course we've come
up with a couple of things that have
| | 01:15 | tripped up people right off the top
when they are trying to watch this video
| | 01:19 | tutorial series.
| | 01:20 | One of the first things is
this Buttons window here.
| | 01:24 | Programs like Maya have hundreds and
hundreds of these panels/ Blender has fewer
| | 01:29 | of these to deal with.
| | 01:31 | But one of the things that happens is,
and it's a feature of Blender, is that
| | 01:35 | this window is a general-purpose
window that holds these things called panels.
| | 01:42 | And these panels can be arranged or floated.
| | 01:47 | The issue is that they can float off
the screen and you can see that this panel
| | 01:53 | up here, which is the Anim panel, is
actually floated way up off the screen.
| | 01:57 | So if in a video, I say click the
Anim panel and your Anim panel is floated up here,
| | 02:04 | you're not going to be able to see it.
| | 02:05 | In fact, the Render panel
is like nowhere to be found.
| | 02:08 | You'd be looking for the Render
panels like where is the Render panel?
| | 02:12 | If things happen to line up just like
that, you're totally faked out, because
| | 02:16 | you think there is no Render panel.
| | 02:18 | You can't find it in the list.
| | 02:20 | The only real absolute way to reset
this is to right-click in any empty area
| | 02:26 | of the panel and select, in this case,
Vertical, because these panels align vertically.
| | 02:32 | If you select Horizontal, then Blender
thinks you want the panels selected and
| | 02:37 | arranged this way, which is
really going to throw you off.
| | 02:41 | The other thing that happens with these
panels is they can tab over one another.
| | 02:47 | That's a tabbing feature.
| | 02:48 | So now these two panels take up
the same amount of screen space.
| | 02:53 | Remember that 5-10 years ago, CRTs and
display devices were really small and
| | 02:59 | screen real estate was at a premium.
| | 03:01 | A lot of things have been done in
Blender to really condense everything down and
| | 03:06 | make everything really tight
as far as screen space goes.
| | 03:09 | Nowadays, and I'm working on some 21-
inch monitor with screen space, it's not
| | 03:15 | that much of a consideration.
| | 03:17 | But there are leftovers like this tabbing thing.
| | 03:20 | The bad thing about the tabbing
thing is of course you can't see this
| | 03:23 | Format panel right now.
| | 03:24 | The other bad thing about tabbing is
that if I minimize this panel to be able to
| | 03:28 | put it away, so that I get nice
stacking thing, look what happened here.
| | 03:33 | The Format panel isn't even mentioned,
so you wouldn't even be able to find the
| | 03:36 | Format panel unless you just happen to do that.
| | 03:40 | So you have to really keep track of
what's where and you'll see me every now and
| | 03:45 | then throughout the videos doing little
bit of housekeeping to try to make sure
| | 03:49 | that I don't overlap those
panels, because I often lose them.
| | 03:52 | Then I'm going to go ahead
and expand a couple here.
| | 03:57 | When you resize the window, what
Blender tries to do is it tries to
| | 04:01 | proportionally resize all of these
different windowpanes so that they all take
| | 04:06 | about the same amount of space.
| | 04:08 | When you open my exercise files,
what's going to happen is your windows and
| | 04:13 | panes and the contents of them
won't look like mine in the video.
| | 04:18 | In particular, the Buttons window thing
here will be scrolled, so these options
| | 04:25 | that are up here, you wouldn't be able to see.
| | 04:27 | When you open up your file, it may
like down here or something like that.
| | 04:31 | So this window won't look exactly the
same way, and again the only real way
| | 04:35 | to be absolutely sure is to reset it
to Vertical, and then all of the panels
| | 04:41 | will line up.
| | 04:42 | Another thing that will trip some
people up is when there is a File Browser or
| | 04:47 | Image Browser window loaded, you may
not have the same directory structure as I do.
| | 04:53 | So when you open up the exercise file,
even though in the video this will have
| | 04:58 | some path in here, you won't have that
path, because that path doesn't exist
| | 05:04 | on your computer.
| | 05:05 | So it will reset to your Volume ID or
on Mac it will reset to something else.
| | 05:09 | Because of that, then these images
that are shown in this window will be
| | 05:13 | different, because it's pointing to a
different folder and so the contents of
| | 05:18 | that folder are different on
your machine than are on my machine.
| | 05:23 | Another Blender oddity is
what I call the Render Carry Over.
| | 05:27 | The last time or last file that I was
working on when I was recording this
| | 05:31 | series and I'm doing test renders
and everything, I'm going to have let's
| | 05:35 | say this image here.
| | 05:38 | When I open up the next file and I
haven't shut down Blender and everything,
| | 05:42 | Blender remembers that render and
tries to bring that in and shows that
| | 05:46 | sometimes in an UV/Image Editor, when
it is set to be showing the render result
| | 05:51 | or the result of a viewer
node or something else like that.
| | 05:55 | If you haven't done that,
then you won't see this image.
| | 05:58 | This image is not really that important.
| | 06:00 | During the course of the exercise,
we'll be generating our own images, but just
| | 06:04 | don't let it throw you off that when you
first open up the Blender file, you may
| | 06:07 | not get the same image that you see
in a render result or a viewer node.
| | 06:13 | The other thing as we get in to
compositing, and I realize that's way down there
| | 06:17 | in Chapter 8, but I want to go ahead and
mentioned it now. When you first open up
| | 06:22 | an exercise file, which has a Render
Noodle in it, and this is called a Render
| | 06:26 | Noodle inside the Node Editor window,
you're not going to see these thumbnails
| | 06:32 | in your display, because the
noodle has not been executed.
| | 06:36 | You always need to press
E to execute the noodle.
| | 06:40 | When you do that, then it
will read in those images.
| | 06:43 | It doesn't actually read
it in until it needs it.
| | 06:47 | Now there is one bug that is known on
Macs with NVIDIA cards. The Apple driver's
| | 06:53 | not quite up to snuff.
| | 06:55 | So these thumbnail images will
not appear for love nor money.
| | 06:59 | There is nothing you can
do to get them to appear.
| | 07:02 | That's just a bug in the driver, and if
you own an Apple with an NVIDIA card,
| | 07:06 | we ask that you write to Apple and ask them
to update their driver for that card to
| | 07:11 | the latest OpenGL standard.
| | 07:13 | Otherwise, if you're running like a
Windows box and you have an NVIDIA card,
| | 07:17 | chances are it will run just fine.
| | 07:19 | So please take all of these things that
I've said about the floating panel here,
| | 07:23 | the Render Results or Carry Over
Results and these directories and keep them in
| | 07:27 | mind as you're using Blender to make
sure that you're not tripped up by these things
| | 07:32 | and that you can carry forward
with the exercise and get to know and
| | 07:35 | learn and love Blender as much as I do.
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| Introducing the User Interface, Console, and Render windows| 00:00 | When you first start Blender by double-
clicking on the icon, there are actually
| | 00:04 | two windows that came up real fast,
and I want to point those out to you.
| | 00:08 | First of all, when you get the
user interface window, you'll see the splash screen.
| | 00:13 | As soon as you move your mouse a
little bit, the splash screen goes away.
| | 00:17 | So when you see that disappear,
don't let that wigg you out.
| | 00:20 | I'm going to minimize this user
interface window to display the console window.
| | 00:25 | Now on a Linux or a Mac machine, you
have to actually start Blender from a
| | 00:29 | terminal window and that terminal
window becomes the console window.
| | 00:34 | So every user on the Linux machine
knows how to get to the terminal window.
| | 00:38 | On a Mac machine what you want to do
is you want to open up Finder and choose
| | 00:42 | Applications and then
scroll on down to Utilities.
| | 00:46 | Within the Utilities folder,
you'll find the Terminal application.
| | 00:50 | Just double-click on the Terminal
application and within this window you have to
| | 00:54 | manually type cd /Applications.
| | 01:01 | That changes you into
the Applications directory.
| | 01:05 | Then you need to do an ls blender.app
to see if Blender is installed in this
| | 01:13 | directory or whether there is some other
subdirectory. In some installations you
| | 01:17 | put Blender in a separate
folder underneath Applications.
| | 01:21 | In this case, if it comes up Contents
and says that Blender is right there, so
| | 01:25 | all you need to do is cd blender.app.
| | 01:30 | Now to run Blender, all I need to
do is type in Contents/MacOs/blender.
| | 01:38 | Press Enter or Return and Blender will
start up, just like it does on Windows
| | 01:43 | machines or like when you start it up
from the icon on the desktop or within the
| | 01:47 | Applications folder.
| | 01:48 | Only the difference is now if I
minimize my Blender window, I still have my
| | 01:52 | Terminal window up here, which is
equivalent to the console window on Windows.
| | 01:57 | You can already see that Blender has
already given us status messages in the
| | 02:01 | window and is communicating back to us.
| | 02:03 | So, now as we use Blender, it
will operate the same way as on the
| | 02:07 | Windows machine.
| | 02:09 | So let's dissolve back to the Windows
machine and learn more about this console
| | 02:13 | window and what it can do for us.
| | 02:15 | This is where a Blender talks back to
you and tells you how things are going.
| | 02:19 | As it's making progress towards maybe
rendering out a very large image or a
| | 02:24 | sequence of images, it will tell you as
it renders out each image and adds it to
| | 02:29 | the AVI file and give you
progress updates in this console window.
| | 02:33 | Also, if you're doing something wrong
that's causing some conflicts within
| | 02:37 | Blender, it's going to spit out an
error message here to this console window.
| | 02:41 | The third window that comes up is
when you actually do a render, here.
| | 02:45 | This is the default render of the
cube hanging out there in hyperspace.
| | 02:50 | This is another window that comes up and
it allows you to inspect the output and
| | 02:55 | see what the actual result of the render is.
| | 02:57 | So those are the three windows that
are used when you're running Blender.
| | 03:03 | We're of course going to be doing all
of our work in the user interface window.
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| Configuring the desktop for an efficient workflow| 00:00 | Computer graphics workflow involves
going through a number of different kinds of
| | 00:05 | activities, and Blender supports those
different activities by giving you a set
| | 00:09 | of desktops that you go
through called Screen Layouts.
| | 00:13 | If you come here and click and drop
this list down, you'll see five default
| | 00:17 | screen layouts that come with the
vanilla, generic version of Blender.
| | 00:23 | This set provides the core window
types for each of those activities.
| | 00:28 | You select these windows simply by
clicking on and selecting them from the menu
| | 00:33 | and then your desktop will
change to that particular layout.
| | 00:37 | So each layout is a set of streams that
goes with a particular kind of activity
| | 00:43 | that you're performing.
| | 00:45 | Each window has a windowpane.
| | 00:47 | For example, in the Animation layout
when we're dealing with animation we have a
| | 00:53 | five windowpane layout.
| | 00:56 | If you hover your mouse cursor over the
border of the window, your mouse cursor
| | 01:01 | changes to a left right arrow, and you
can resize the windowpane that way to
| | 01:07 | scale it up or give yourself more space.
| | 01:11 | This is a windowpane here, which is
called the 3D View windowpane, and each kind
| | 01:15 | of window is indicated in the lower
left-hand corner, by default, if the
| | 01:20 | windowpane header is at
the bottom of the windowpane.
| | 01:24 | Selecting that then can change this
windowpane to be any kind of window type.
| | 01:31 | Over here we have an IPO window
that is used in animating an object.
| | 01:37 | Down here we have a Timeline window
that is used to scroll through the
| | 01:42 | timeline of the animation.
| | 01:44 | Down here we have what's
called the Buttons window.
| | 01:47 | But notice now here on this Buttons
window that the header is at the top of
| | 01:51 | the windowpane.
| | 01:52 | You can also hide the window header,
for example, here in the Material
| | 01:57 | Desktop Layout.
| | 01:58 | We've gone ahead and hidden the
window headers so that they don't take up a
| | 02:02 | lot of screen space.
| | 02:04 | Each window type may have a context
associated with it or a mode associated with it.
| | 02:11 | So, for example, in this Buttons
window we have a couple of contexts.
| | 02:17 | Here is the Shading context, the
Object context, the Editing context, and
| | 02:24 | finally the Scene context.
| | 02:27 | So these are like sets or layers of
different panels or controls all contained
| | 02:33 | within this one window.
| | 02:35 | Within like this 3D window here, we
have a couple of different modes and
| | 02:40 | switching into each mode invokes a
different area or specialty of Blender and
| | 02:47 | allows us to do different
things within this one window type.
| | 02:53 | Since these windows are sort of
rectangular ways to split up the desk space into
| | 02:58 | multiple windows, you can split any
kind of window by coming up to the window
| | 03:04 | border and right-clicking to popup a menu.
| | 03:08 | When you do this, now you have a popup
menu to say I want to hide the header, in
| | 03:13 | this case, or I want to split the area.
| | 03:16 | If you just click, the window will be
split into a virtual window and you can
| | 03:21 | slide your mouse, in this case, left and
right, or if this was a vertical split,
| | 03:25 | you would go up and down.
| | 03:26 | To split the window when you click again,
you now have two windows, and you can
| | 03:31 | resize these windows as well.
| | 03:34 | If you line up the vertical bars, or in
the case of a horizontal bar, depending
| | 03:38 | on which ones you want to combine, you
can join windows, by again, coming to
| | 03:42 | the window border, right-clicking and
now you have the option to join these two areas.
| | 03:48 | When you click on the Join Area, then a
big arrow shows you, do I want to take
| | 03:52 | this top window and merge it into
the bottom one or reverse and merge the
| | 03:58 | windows from the bottom one up with the top one?
| | 04:00 | When you do that, then the window
resizes to be one complete window.
| | 04:06 | So by performing these actions, you can
split the desktops up into any number of
| | 04:10 | windows of any kind that you want.
| | 04:14 | This list of layouts is not fixed,
you can add your own desktop by simply
| | 04:20 | clicking Add New, and then you can
choose to start with a duplicate of this
| | 04:25 | desktop or start with a completely
empty desktop and then start splitting
| | 04:30 | from there.
| | 04:31 | You can delete a desktop
just by clicking the X there.
| | 04:34 | That deletes the desktop after you
confirm that you want to, in fact,
| | 04:38 | really delete the screen.
| | 04:40 | Now I have created a couple of
customized desktops for this exercise and
| | 04:44 | for this title.
| | 04:46 | So to open up a file, you simply come
over here to File > Open, click on this
| | 04:51 | Selector button here and
go directly to your desktop.
| | 04:56 | Now you will have a richer set of
desktops to choose from and to build
| | 05:01 | your expertise on.
| | 05:04 | Finally, you can save this desktop
layout and, in fact, any Blend file as your
| | 05:10 | default start up by simply in any
place pressing Ctrl+U on the keyboard.
| | 05:17 | That saves the current Blend file as
your user default set of desktops and
| | 05:25 | whatever content happens to be in there,
in this case, upon confirming that I
| | 05:30 | want to save my user defaults, now
every time I start Blender, will have this
| | 05:35 | set of desktops here, these nine
sections, as well as a scene that contains a
| | 05:42 | cube and a couple of lights
set up in a very standard manner.
| | 05:47 | So that's the overview to getting used
to starting with Blender, and maybe a
| | 05:52 | little bit of uncommon interface that
Blender uses, because we are going to be
| | 05:57 | working in a very complex environment,
but gives you a way of providing you with
| | 06:03 | multiple views and multiple types
of windows so that you can work very
| | 06:08 | effectively and not be spending a lot
of time switching windows or layering
| | 06:13 | windows or staking them and docking
them and undocking them and all of that
| | 06:16 | stuff that wastes a lot of time.
| | 06:19 | In this case, the Blender user
interface is well contained within one
| | 06:24 | nice rectangular area.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the mouse and tablet on a PC or a Mac| 00:00 | Blender has a very dense user interface.
Everything is clickable and all hotkeys
| | 00:06 | are active, but the hotkeys are a
little different maybe, depending on the
| | 00:11 | window that you happen to
have your mouse cursor in.
| | 00:14 | In general, the biggest thing is that
the right-click is the Select function by default.
| | 00:19 | So if I just hover my mouse cursor
here over the lamp, and I right-click,
| | 00:25 | I select that lamp.
| | 00:27 | If I right-click over this ground
plane, then I've clicked and selected
| | 00:32 | the ground plane.
| | 00:33 | When I left-click, left-
clicking is activating something.
| | 00:37 | So if I left-click here under the
Rotation X field, I'm actually clicking in and
| | 00:42 | starting to edit this field.
| | 00:45 | The middle mouse button functions to, in
the 3D View, pan or scroll or rotate in
| | 00:52 | a turntable kind of fashion, the display.
| | 00:55 | If it's over here in a window that
has more information on it that can be
| | 01:01 | displayed within the size of the
window, then the middle mouse button acts
| | 01:05 | to pan the window.
| | 01:07 | The mouse wheel, both on the Mac and on
Windows, serves generally to zoom in and
| | 01:13 | zoom out, so you can zoom in closer
by mouse-wheeling up and zoom out by
| | 01:19 | mouse-wheeling down.
| | 01:20 | Now I should point out that this left
and right selectability will change based
| | 01:26 | on your user preferences.
| | 01:27 | Your User Preference window is always at
the top of your screen and you just can
| | 01:32 | reach up there and pull it down to
resize this window to reveal all of the user
| | 01:37 | preference settings and
customizations that you can make.
| | 01:41 | There's just a ton of these and
I'm only going to go over a few in
| | 01:44 | this particular video.
| | 01:45 | But right up here you can see where we
select with and Right Mouse is enabled.
| | 01:51 | If we click left mouse, now for your
user interface, every time you want to
| | 01:58 | select something, you simply left-click
on the object and instead right-clicking
| | 02:04 | does the activation.
| | 02:07 | If you're using Blender on a laptop
that doesn't have a middle mouse button,
| | 02:11 | you can click this to enable a three-button
mouse and then you'll use the Alt key instead.
| | 02:18 | Normally, the middle mouse button,
as I've said, rotates the view.
| | 02:22 | Other 3D graphics packages sort of have
the default user customization to pan the view.
| | 02:28 | So now when I come over here and I
middle-mouse-click, I'm going to pan the
| | 02:33 | view, which is essentially like sliding
your viewport and not actually rotating
| | 02:38 | it around in a turntable kind of a fashion.
| | 02:41 | Now I just described that using their
mouse wheel rolls in and rolls out, you
| | 02:45 | can invert that of course and you can
also use what's called the Smooth View
| | 02:50 | Mode, which is now when I come in here
and I press keypad 3, instead of just
| | 02:55 | jumping from view to view, I can
increase this let's say up to a couple of
| | 03:00 | hundred milliseconds.
| | 03:02 | Now I have more of a smoother
transition from view to view.
| | 03:07 | Blender also supports a pen tablet.
| | 03:10 | I have one here by the Wacom.
| | 03:13 | It plugs in and it's essentially used as
a mouse, but because it's a pen tablet,
| | 03:17 | it has some pen sensitivity.
| | 03:20 | In certain modes when I'm doing certain
things like texture painting, over here
| | 03:25 | in the Buttons window, I'll go ahead
and expand this panel and realign it
| | 03:31 | vertically to size these panels up,
you'll see these P buttons next to Opacity,
| | 03:37 | Size, Falloff and Spacing.
| | 03:39 | If I enable one of those, let's say Size,
now depending on how hard I'm pressing
| | 03:45 | on the pen, the size of the area,
that the pen effects will increase.
| | 03:51 | Normally, you operate on certain
objects by invoking some sort of a hotkey, but
| | 03:58 | Blender also has what's called a
Gesture System, which means that if you simply
| | 04:03 | gesture with your mouse, you will
invoke some sorts of operation to perform.
| | 04:09 | So, for example, if I just left-click
and drag my mouse rapidly to the right
| | 04:15 | and then let up, I've told Blender
that I want to grab the particular object
| | 04:21 | that I've just done.
| | 04:22 | So now I'm moving this object around.
| | 04:25 | If I want to drop this in
place, I would left-click.
| | 04:28 | If I want to abort the
operation, I just right-click.
| | 04:33 | It puts it back where it found it.
| | 04:35 | Other gestures include a circle, so if
I just click-and-drag in a circle, I've
| | 04:39 | told Blender that I want to
rotate the current object.
| | 04:43 | So those cover the basic mouse operations.
| | 04:46 | I should note that everything is
clickable and Blender does not come up with a
| | 04:51 | popup box that says are you sure
you want to do which you just did?
| | 04:54 | No, we assume that when you do
something, it's what you wanted to do.
| | 04:59 | We're going to get into the undo
system and all that kind of stuff, but there
| | 05:02 | are a lot of pop-ups that will
interfere with your workflow.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Acquiring keyboard skills | 00:00 | In this video, we are going to go over
to the keyboard shortcuts that are used
| | 00:04 | primarily in the 3D view but
also in other kinds of window types.
| | 00:08 | First of all you should know that
almost every key on the keyboard
| | 00:12 | does something.
| | 00:13 | It's a very common Blender thing to
have the mouse in one hand and your other
| | 00:18 | hand over the keyboard and the keypad
because you are often mousing and using
| | 00:24 | the keyboard in conjunction.
| | 00:26 | So for example, here we have one of
the opening scenes to the Big Buck Bunny
| | 00:30 | movie, which in an open asset, which
can you can download for free and this is
| | 00:35 | from Scene 1, Shot 2.
| | 00:38 | This is a picture of a flowing stream.
| | 00:41 | So in here I'm going to right-click on
this clump of grass and demonstrate the
| | 00:46 | very first keyboard shortcut which is X
. X deletes the object, when you press X
| | 00:51 | a pop-up comes up just to make sure
that you really do want to delete that
| | 00:55 | object and if you left-click
and confirm it, away it goes.
| | 01:00 | The next most common command is if you
have selected an object to press G to
| | 01:05 | grab it and the easiest way to
remember all these shortcuts is just to simply
| | 01:09 | mnemonics and kind of learned Blender language.
| | 01:12 | So if I want to grab something, I
just press G and now I'm grabbing and
| | 01:17 | moving this object around.
| | 01:20 | If I select an object and
press R, I'm rotating it.
| | 01:25 | R to rotate and if I have this clump of
grass here and I want to make it bigger
| | 01:31 | I want to scale it up or scale it down.
| | 01:34 | So I press S and moving my
mouse scales it up and down.
| | 01:39 | Again, if I want to confirm where I'm
scaling and I just left-click to drop it
| | 01:44 | in place or if I'm in the process of
scaling something let's say, I don't want
| | 01:50 | to either scale that object or just
changed my mind, I just can right-click and
| | 01:55 | that kind of aborts that operation.
| | 01:57 | I can also hide objects from view by yes,
you guessed it, pressing H. Now a lot
| | 02:04 | of these commands too can
have an opposite effect.
| | 02:07 | So like I have just hidden that clump of grass.
| | 02:10 | If I want to unhide it, I hold the
Alt key and press the exact same hot key
| | 02:15 | again, which in this case
would be Alt+H unhides that object.
| | 02:21 | When I grab and move something, I'm
moving it around in 3D space and I may
| | 02:26 | or may not want that.
| | 02:27 | If I want to move it in a certain
direction along a certain axis, I can
| | 02:32 | constrain the movement of the object
after I press G, by pressing the letters X,
| | 02:38 | Y or Z. In this case I'm pressing Z
and now I'm moving this object, no matter
| | 02:45 | how I move my mouse.
| | 02:47 | If I move my mouse just basically
left and right, I'm only moving it up and
| | 02:52 | down a little bit.
| | 02:53 | So the object is not going
to move freely in 3D space.
| | 02:57 | It's going to be
constrained to move along that axis.
| | 03:00 | While I'm moving it, I can change my
mind if I for example, picked the wrong the
| | 03:04 | axis which I frequently do, I can just
press X now and now I'm moving this clump
| | 03:10 | of grass along the X-axis direction only.
| | 03:14 | The Tab key is the next most common
key I would like to talk about and that
| | 03:18 | tabs you into Edit Mode.
| | 03:20 | So when I have my grass selected and I
press Tab, I go into Edit Mode, which
| | 03:27 | changes the mode down
here in this 3D View header.
| | 03:31 | I'm now changing the shape of this
grass clump and when I press Tab again, I
| | 03:37 | tab out of Edit Mode.
| | 03:39 | So that's sort of like a radio button
kind of a thing where I'm tabbing one time
| | 03:43 | and tabbing again to exit the Edit Mode.
| | 03:46 | The next most common is the Spacebar,
the Spacebar brings up a context sensitive
| | 03:52 | menu of the most commonly used
functions that you would do in this particular
| | 03:57 | window or for this particular kind of mode.
| | 04:01 | And I just pressed Escape to put that menu away.
| | 04:04 | Lastly, we are dealing with an
animation program that deals in time and we use
| | 04:09 | the cursor keys on your keyboard to
navigate through the animation and time.
| | 04:16 | In this case, the right arrow advances
by one frame in the animation and if I
| | 04:22 | scroll out here, you can
probably see something's moving around.
| | 04:26 | If I use the Left Arrow, I'm backing
up in time and you can see the frame
| | 04:31 | number changing in the lower left-hand
corner of the 3D View, and if I press
| | 04:36 | the Up Arrow, I'm advancing by ten
frames and the Down Arrow backs me up in
| | 04:41 | time by ten frames.
| | 04:43 | So the Left and the Right Arrow by
one frame and Up and the Down arrow are
| | 04:48 | by ten frames.
| | 04:49 | The keypad also doesn't go to waste.
| | 04:52 | The keypad in 3D View changes your
perspective, pressing 3 brings me to the side
| | 04:59 | view, 1 brings me to the front view and
7 brings to me to the top view, 0 brings
| | 05:06 | me to the view of the camera and
shows me what the camera is going to see.
| | 05:12 | Pressing the intermediate keys 4, 6, 2
or 8 rotates that perspective of that
| | 05:18 | particular view by let's say 15 degrees
and that number of degrees is actually
| | 05:23 | set in your user preferences.
| | 05:28 | The last key that I would like to cover
that kind of trips people up sometimes
| | 05:32 | is the slash key, the slash key hides
everything else and puts you into what's
| | 05:37 | called Local Mode or you are
looking at only the selected object and
| | 05:42 | everything else is hidden.
| | 05:44 | The slash key is a toggle key and so
when you press slash again everything
| | 05:48 | else is revealed.
| | 05:50 | So a lot of people say, oh!
| | 05:51 | My gosh, I hit something and
everything went away, where did everything go?
| | 05:54 | Well it's still there.
| | 05:55 | It's just you have to hit the slash key again.
| | 05:58 | The plus key and the minus key on
your keypad do the same thing as your
| | 06:02 | mouse wheel.
| | 06:03 | So as you have seen almost every key
has a use, really nothing is gone to waste
| | 06:08 | and the best way to find out the
exhaustive list of what every key does is to
| | 06:12 | click on the Help and the HotKey
and MouseAction Reference window.
| | 06:18 | Now if this window is too big to fit on
your particular display, you will have
| | 06:22 | an up-down arrow selector here and I'm
going to go ahead and try to resize this
| | 06:28 | to show you that these up and down
selectors come up to scroll the window up so
| | 06:33 | you can get to the whole list.
| | 06:36 | This list is broken up into what do the
arrows do, what do the function keys do,
| | 06:42 | what does each of the different letters do.
| | 06:44 | So I mentioned that H to hide for
example and depending on the kind of window or
| | 06:49 | the kind of object you are operating
on, the H key may do one of several
| | 06:54 | different sort of related things.
| | 06:57 | The Mouse actions is here as well,
as well as the Numbers at the top of
| | 07:02 | your keyboard have a different use
in revealing or hiding or showing
| | 07:07 | different layers.
| | 07:08 | Your numpad on your keyboard, which I
just briefly discussed but is exhaustively
| | 07:14 | documented here, you can also search.
| | 07:17 | So if you know you want to do
something but you really don't know, what it's
| | 07:21 | called, you can just type in move and
then the Help will find the synonym for
| | 07:27 | that particular function.
| | 07:28 | That covers your basic essential
keyboard skills of being able to use the
| | 07:32 | keyboard and the keypad and
the arrow keys in Blender.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Window panes and types| 00:00 | In this video I'll explain all the
major functionality that's available in
| | 00:04 | Blender through all the different
window types just to really kind of touch
| | 00:08 | on each one so that you are aware of
what's there and what it does and what
| | 00:13 | it's used for.
| | 00:15 | So the first one is the User Preferences window.
| | 00:17 | Hover over the border and click-
and-drag to resize the window.
| | 00:21 | People usually visit right off the top
of the bat in order to talk about how
| | 00:25 | they want to view and setup their basic
controls and their basic mouse actions.
| | 00:32 | You have edit methods that
enable Undo, which is also very handy.
| | 00:38 | We have the Language and Fonts.
| | 00:40 | We support international fonts as
well as changing the native language
| | 00:44 | of Blender so that all of your
prompts and menu options are in your
| | 00:50 | native language.
| | 00:51 | We also have Themes that we'll
be setting up a little later on.
| | 00:55 | Auto Save, there is a special video on
that as well as configuring Blender to
| | 01:00 | make the maximum use of your computer.
| | 01:03 | And then also if you want to save
objects or save files in a specific directory
| | 01:08 | or a specific location on your computer,
you can do that here in the File Paths.
| | 01:13 | Click-and-drag to resize this window back.
| | 01:16 | The 3D View is the most
commonly used modeling viewport.
| | 01:21 | It provides a window into your 3D space.
| | 01:25 | Now, this particular layout has four
different 3D views, but each of them are in
| | 01:31 | a different perspective.
| | 01:32 | Going this way, we have the camera
view, the side view, the front view and
| | 01:40 | the top view.
| | 01:42 | So each window can operate
independently or can be locked in sync to the
| | 01:49 | other windows.
| | 01:51 | Usually, when you make a selection or
make a change in one window, the change is
| | 01:56 | automatically reflected in
the other windows in real-time.
| | 02:00 | So even though you are making a change
over here in one windowpane because it
| | 02:04 | has some affect on something else in
some other windowpane, the changes are all
| | 02:09 | synchronized and coordinated.
| | 02:10 | The Buttons window is almost on every
Desktop layout and it provides a window
| | 02:16 | into all of the different properties
in some of the tools that are commonly
| | 02:21 | available in Blender.
| | 02:23 | This Properties window as I like
to call it, has a bunch of panels.
| | 02:27 | Those panels can be expanded and
collapsed by clicking on the little arrow.
| | 02:31 | And the arrow changes to a down arrow
when it's expanded or a right facing arrow
| | 02:36 | when it's collapsed.
| | 02:38 | You can also rearrange these
windowpanes just by clicking-and-dragging on
| | 02:43 | the windowpane.
| | 02:44 | Sort of like a tear-off function.
| | 02:46 | Now, you have to be a little careful
with some of these panels because if you
| | 02:50 | drop one panel on top of another one,
Blender will tab them and now I have a
| | 02:56 | Window panel that actually has two tabs
and that's simply to save up some space.
| | 03:03 | When you collapse that kind of
tabbed window, the active panel is the
| | 03:08 | name that's shown there.
| | 03:10 | So if you can't find for example,
the SSS panel it might be tabbed
| | 03:15 | behind another panel.
| | 03:18 | The File Browser window comes up when
you just go File > Open, one of your
| | 03:23 | windows will change to a file browser.
| | 03:27 | And this is the browser window that
you use to locate assets and other blend
| | 03:31 | files, and image files and
texture files on your computer.
| | 03:35 | It has a couple of things, one is
the P button moves up a level in your
| | 03:40 | directory tree and this selector
visits all of the drives, the hard drives,
| | 03:46 | devices that are on your computer,
your documents and your desktop settings.
| | 03:50 | As well as every time you save a blend
file then Blender can, if you configure
| | 03:56 | it in the User Preferences, save the
name of that and then provide you with
| | 03:59 | most recently used list.
| | 04:02 | There is scrollbar here on the right.
| | 04:04 | If I had more files in this folder then
it could fit in the display and the File
| | 04:10 | Browser indicates the kind of
file by a little colored box here.
| | 04:15 | I can change and sort to things by the
time or by the size, by clicking on the
| | 04:22 | selections down here in the header.
| | 04:24 | Any windowpane can be brought to
full screen by either clicking this Full
| | 04:28 | Screen icon, in which case then
this window expands to fill all of your
| | 04:32 | available space or by pressing Ctrl+Up
key I can toggle any windowpane between
| | 04:40 | full and windowed size.
| | 04:43 | The UV Image Editor is kind of a really
neat file because I can use it to open
| | 04:49 | any kind of image file on my
computer and also then do some paintings.
| | 04:53 | So there is like a mini paint
program built into Blender as well.
| | 04:57 | I can also then use the UV Image
browser to display the latest render result.
| | 05:03 | So if I'm over here on the Mac and I
click the big Render button or on Windows
| | 05:09 | or Linux machines press F12, I get the
current render and then I can use the UV
| | 05:15 | Image Editor to display that result.
| | 05:18 | Blender also has an Image browser that
allows you to see thumbnails and select
| | 05:24 | images that you are going to be using.
| | 05:26 | Blender also has an Outliner that allows
us to examine the contents of the scene
| | 05:32 | and as we select an object over here in
the Outliner, we also see it's selected
| | 05:36 | over here in 3D View.
| | 05:38 | We have a Search function where we
know the name of what it is we are
| | 05:42 | looking for, we can simply search for
it and we can also restrict the view
| | 05:47 | of this Outliner to say for example,
show me only things that are of the
| | 05:52 | same type of this object.
| | 05:54 | So in this case I have two mesh objects,
one is Cube and another is a Floor.
| | 05:59 | I can expand and collapse information
about these objects by clicking the little
| | 06:04 | expand and collapse arrows as well.
| | 06:06 | When we get into Composting and
Sequencing, we are going to have what's called
| | 06:10 | the Timeline window, which I'm
showing down here at the bottom.
| | 06:13 | This Timeline window allows us to
scroll forward and backward in our animation
| | 06:18 | in time, as well as it has VCR
controls here that allows us to play our
| | 06:23 | animation, fast forward and skip to the
very end and skip back to the beginning.
| | 06:28 | We can also set the range of our
animation here in these controls.
| | 06:33 | To set any control you just simply
click into the number field and you can type
| | 06:37 | the number in using your keyboard if
you want or you can also just click and
| | 06:42 | then drag to the left or the right
and then you will change that way.
| | 06:46 | The IPO window, which is probably the
most commonly used in animation, allows us
| | 06:52 | to set and control Bezier curves
that control the motion of each object.
| | 07:00 | The IPO window operates on a series of channels.
| | 07:03 | So if I key the location of this
object now these channels come up and I can
| | 07:08 | select these channels very simply.
| | 07:11 | The Action Editor is used to combine
series of actions together in order to
| | 07:17 | create reusable types of motions and
then the NLA Editor combines those actions
| | 07:23 | and sequences them into a complete
animation that we can then render out.
| | 07:29 | The Sequencer is used to sequence a
series of video strips together into a
| | 07:34 | final composite output and a Text
Editor is available to both edit text that we
| | 07:40 | can later then convert to a object in
the scene or just to keep notes and keep
| | 07:46 | a time card about what's going on in
your project and document notes and
| | 07:51 | comments about the project.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Exploring the default scene| 00:01 | So let's walk through the default scene
that opens up because it can be kind of
| | 00:04 | daunting to some people. Blender
doesn't have nearly as many buttons and
| | 00:08 | options and controls as other
complicated 3D CG modeling programs, but it's got
| | 00:14 | a fair amount.
| | 00:15 | So let's go through it.
| | 00:16 | We have understood that each window
pane has a header and on this header,
| | 00:22 | you have the Selector type where you can
change type of the window it is or see what
| | 00:27 | kind of window it is.
| | 00:28 | The next thing you have is this
Expand/Collapse arrow that expands and
| | 00:33 | collapses the menu.
| | 00:35 | The menu is shown right here and the
menu changes based on the mode or based on
| | 00:39 | what's selected and what's appropriate
to whatever it is you are working on.
| | 00:43 | Next, comes out Mode Selector that I
touched on earlier that varies based on the
| | 00:47 | window type and then based on the mode
that you are in, different tools come
| | 00:52 | into play on your toolbar here, and
what I just did is I clicked the middle
| | 00:58 | mouse button and dragged.
| | 01:00 | So here we changed the viewpoint of
the kind of view that we are looking at.
| | 01:06 | We can also change our rotation center
as well as invoke this little widget here
| | 01:11 | that's used to enable us to easily grab
and change the location or the rotation
| | 01:17 | and/or the scaling of the particular
object or in this case, since we are in
| | 01:21 | Edit Mode, the vertices that make up this mesh.
| | 01:25 | Blender also has a Proportional Editing
tool as well as a Snap tool and allows
| | 01:30 | you to look at this editable mesh in
terms of the vertices that make it up,
| | 01:35 | the edges that make it up and/
or the faces that make it up.
| | 01:38 | You can click on either one of those
or Shift-click to multiple-select them.
| | 01:44 | So the default scene consists of this
cube and I'm going to press Tab now to
| | 01:47 | tab out of Edit Mode.
| | 01:49 | It consists of that cube, a couple of lights.
| | 01:53 | This is a spotlight here
shining down on the cube.
| | 01:56 | The camera of course, the all important camera.
| | 01:58 | So we can take a picture of this
wonderful scene that we'll be constructing and
| | 02:03 | a couple of other hemisphere
lights as well as the ground plane.
| | 02:06 | This grid kind of gives us an
orientation and kind of a view part of where the
| | 02:11 | world begins and ends and
what's up and down and like that.
| | 02:15 | You can turn that off by going to
the View and View Properties and
| | 02:19 | disabling Grid Floor.
| | 02:21 | You can also disable the X and the Y
axes that are also shown by default.
| | 02:26 | You can change the Grid Spacing as
well as some information about where the
| | 02:31 | 3D cursor is.
| | 02:33 | The 3D cursor is an important
thing to talk about right now.
| | 02:36 | It is replaced in 3D space every time
you just left-click and it's this red and
| | 02:42 | white dashed kind of
circle with the cross-hairs.
| | 02:45 | It's designed to be pretty visible and
pretty unmistakable whatever view you are in.
| | 02:50 | So depending on where you click and in
what window you click, you then activate
| | 02:54 | and position that 3D cursor.
| | 02:56 | That 3D cursor is used for a lot of things.
| | 02:59 | When you press space and you want to
add some other objects, let's say
| | 03:02 | we wanted to add a UV sphere and we go
ahead and click OK to confirm that,
| | 03:07 | that object is created and put where the 3D
cursor is, the center of the sphere now is
| | 03:12 | where that 3D cursor is.
| | 03:14 | So that's why it's pretty
important for that 3D cursor.
| | 03:17 | There's a lot of Snap tools as well
that allows you to snap things to the 3D
| | 03:21 | cursor and like that.
| | 03:23 | So every CG scene has to have at least
a camera, so you can take a picture of
| | 03:29 | the CG scene and some lights to light
it up and then of course something to
| | 03:35 | actually see within the CG space.
| | 03:37 | Lastly, I would like to cover layers.
| | 03:40 | Now, different applications cover
layers in a different kind of a manner and
| | 03:44 | Blender has its own approach.
| | 03:46 | A layer is a way of organizing your
information and all the objects that are in
| | 03:52 | this sometimes very complicated scene.
| | 03:54 | So we use layers and we have 20 of them
selected here and by default, they are
| | 04:00 | numbered from 1 through 5 in this little
first group and then they do just a
| | 04:05 | little visual break and then there is
number 6 through 10 and then the bottom layers,
| | 04:10 | layers 11 through
15, and then 16 through 20.
| | 04:14 | So almost with everything in Blender,
you can select one of them or hold the
| | 04:20 | Shift key down to select many of them.
| | 04:23 | Now, these layers are so important,
| | 04:25 | the number keys at the top of your
keyboard select a particular layer.
| | 04:30 | So for example, I'm going to press 5
on my keyboard and that selects layer 5,
| | 04:35 | 6, 7, 8, 9.
| | 04:37 | If I want to Shift+Select and select
many of them, I hold the Shift key down and
| | 04:42 | I guess it's supposed to be like
the @ sign above the 2, hold, then I'm going
| | 04:46 | to do it by actually Shift+
Selecting Layer 2 as well.
| | 04:49 | So each object is
assigned to one or more layers.
| | 04:53 | So this cube right here, if I press M in
the 3D View to map out what layers this
| | 04:59 | cube is member of, I can see
that the cube is on layer 1.
| | 05:04 | So as long as I have layer 1 selected
down here, I'm going to see that cube.
| | 05:08 | If I click on let's say Layer 3,
I don't see anything because nothing in this
| | 05:12 | particular scene is a member of that
layer and I can tell that because there
| | 05:16 | is not a little dot.
| | 05:18 | There is a little dot on the Layer button.
| | 05:20 | It means that something is on there.
| | 05:22 | So that's an overview of the default
scene and what it means to you and how to
| | 05:27 | organize and select different things,
and see what's in a particular scene.
| | 05:32 | When you open up somebody
else's scene, it's like Wow!
| | 05:35 | What's all this stuff here?
| | 05:36 | Well, that's how you can navigate
around and start to break it down.
| | 05:39 | I would suggest you start with the
layers, go through each and see what kinds
| | 05:43 | of things are organized on the
different layers, and try to get a feel for all
| | 05:47 | of the different objects that come together
in a 3D scene to produce the actual rendered output.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting themes, UI colors, and user preferences| 00:00 | In Blender, theme refers to the color
scheme that's used and the style of the
| | 00:06 | user interface and you can customize this.
| | 00:09 | The way you get to the themes is to
pull down your User Preferences window and
| | 00:14 | click over here on the Themes tab and
there are two themes that are shipped
| | 00:19 | with Blender.
| | 00:20 | Woo! The Default and the Rounded theme.
| | 00:23 | The Rounded theme gives a more of a
Mac-like Halloween kind of feel to the
| | 00:27 | whole user interface.
| | 00:29 | The backgrounds are a little darker gray,
and then your highlights are in orange.
| | 00:33 | So you have this kind of a charcoal
and orange feel to it and all of the
| | 00:37 | windows, all of the little controls
now have kind of a rounded outline.
| | 00:41 | However, I find it kind of dark to work in.
| | 00:44 | So what I like to do is to load up
a whole set of customized themes.
| | 00:48 | But before I do that, let me go
through on how you can now customize your own
| | 00:52 | theme and then I'll show you a
fully customized theme that I like.
| | 00:55 | First of all you know you can add or
delete your own theme if you want and when
| | 01:00 | you click Add, now I have a New User
Theme that's going to be set up and for
| | 01:04 | each type of window, and we have
already gone over all the types of windows,
| | 01:07 | so you can see I'm trying to approach
this in a pretty structured manner.
| | 01:11 | But when we come up to like the 3D
view, we now have different elements
| | 01:15 | within the 3D View.
| | 01:17 | So we have the background, we have text,
we have text highlights, we have the header,
| | 01:22 | we have the panel, we have
the grid itself, when things are shown in
| | 01:26 | normal and grouped mode and things like that.
| | 01:29 | So let's just go ahead and change the
background and when we select Background here,
| | 01:34 | now we have these RGB sliders or
Red, Green and Blue sliders that allow
| | 01:39 | you to change the color.
| | 01:41 | So if I want to give it like a little
pink action going on or slide it down to
| | 01:46 | like a gold background, I can do that.
| | 01:49 | I can also just click on the Swatch
here and bring up the handy-dandy color
| | 01:53 | picker applet and this applet allows
me to select any particular color from
| | 01:59 | the infinite range of colors that are
supported and when I just press Enter,
| | 02:02 | then boom! There it is.
| | 02:04 | We have a lime green, charcoal really
kind of ugly looking user interface and
| | 02:09 | it's really easy to make a user
interface kind of ugly and that's why I always
| | 02:14 | want to reuse a theme that's been
developed by people and you can go out to
| | 02:19 | Google and google Blender Themes and
come up with a bunch but I have given you
| | 02:23 | one that is pretty cool, and what we
want to do is we want to run that and each
| | 02:28 | of these themes is actually
a script, a Python script.
| | 02:31 | So if we come out to let's say the
scripting desktop layout, we can come to the
| | 02:36 | Text Editor and simply do a Text > Open and
if you navigate to your interface folder,
| | 02:43 | you will find a GONX theme by Dittohead.py file.
| | 02:49 | And you just click Open Text File there
and that brings that Python program into Blender.
| | 02:55 | Then we can then
do a Text > Run Python Script.
| | 02:59 | What that does is it sets up what
I think is a very attractive user
| | 03:03 | interface for using Blender.
| | 03:05 | It takes care of all the colors
and all of that kind of good stuff.
| | 03:09 | Finally, now to save this, we'll go
ahead and do a Text > New to get rid of that text,
| | 03:15 | come on back to our Model 4-
up because that's the one that I use.
| | 03:21 | If there is any other changes you want
to make, go ahead and make them and then
| | 03:24 | after you are done, go ahead and
press Ctrl+U for saving the user defaults.
| | 03:30 | When you do that, what Blender is going
to do is it's going to take the contents
| | 03:34 | of this file and put them in a special
place, either in your applications data
| | 03:39 | if you are on Windows or some other
magic place within the Apple and the Linux worlds,
| | 03:43 | and save that as the file, the
actual Blender file, that's going to be
| | 03:48 | opened up the very next
time that you start Blender.
| | 03:52 | So as you can see, Blender offers a very
flexible way of customizing the colors
| | 03:57 | and the appearance of the user interface.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding how to safeguard your data with autosave and backups| 00:00 | One of the most frustrating things to
me is when I'm working hard on something
| | 00:06 | in an application and say all of a
sudden it just decides to crash for whatever
| | 00:10 | reason or we lose power right in the
middle of something and so Blender has a
| | 00:15 | number of different things that help
protect you and help you be able to recover
| | 00:19 | from that kind of situation.
| | 00:21 | And I would like to go over them in this video.
| | 00:24 | There are a couple of different ways.
| | 00:26 | First of all, let's talk about
undo and redo, and pull down your User
| | 00:31 | Preferences settings, and click here
on Auto Save, and click here on Views &
| | 00:37 | Controls, and click here on Edit Methods.
| | 00:41 | Here, in this tab right here is the
Undo function and Blender can save a whole
| | 00:46 | bunch of different undo steps, 32 is by default.
| | 00:50 | So each time you do something--
Let's say I'm going to move this cube.
| | 00:54 | Then I drop it and Oh!
| | 00:55 | What did I do that for?
| | 00:56 | I don't want to do that.
| | 00:57 | Then just press Ctrl+Z. That undoes
whatever that is and then also I can do
| | 01:02 | Ctrl+Y to redo that action again.
| | 01:06 | Like, oh No!
| | 01:07 | No, I really did want it over there.
| | 01:09 | So I just press Ctrl+Y, and
it goes back to where it was.
| | 01:12 | By default now, an unlimited amount
of memory is going to be used to save
| | 01:16 | anything done anywhere within Blender.
| | 01:19 | So that's the first thing, undo and
redo just from short simple mistakes.
| | 01:23 | Now, for a little bigger
mistake, click on Auto Save.
| | 01:25 | Let's say I have been working in a
file and all of a sudden, I lose power.
| | 01:31 | Well, Blender has what's called Auto
Save Temp Files, which means that in the
| | 01:36 | magic place on your hard-drive it's
going to save out a copy of the Blend file,
| | 01:41 | in this case, every 5 minutes.
| | 01:43 | So I'm never really going to ever lose
anymore than 5 minutes worth of work.
| | 01:48 | If for example we lose power right in
the middle of something, all I need to do
| | 01:52 | is go out to my Operating System Temp folder.
| | 01:55 | Now, depending on the Operating
System, this Temp folder could be
| | 01:58 | located anywhere.
| | 02:00 | In Vista, it's kept in a very magic
secret place that's not even really shown to
| | 02:06 | you, which is really kind of annoying,
but under Users and then your name of
| | 02:11 | your user there is a hidden folder
called AppData for some bizarre reason.
| | 02:18 | So you actually have to click in the
Folder View there, and actually type in
| | 02:23 | \appdata and then this
folder is revealed to you.
| | 02:30 | If you double-click and drive into
this Local, you will find a Temp folder.
| | 02:35 | If you drive into that Temp
folder, you will find two files.
| | 02:39 | One is the most recently saved copy of
whatever changes you have made actually
| | 02:45 | here within the last 5 minutes.
| | 02:46 | The other thing that happens is
every time Blender quits, it writes out
| | 02:51 | a quit.blend file.
| | 02:53 | So if I for example, just in a heat
of passion, I just get really disgusted
| | 02:58 | and then I just go Hey! Quit.
| | 03:00 | And I quit out of Blender, all I need
to do is double-click on that file, and
| | 03:06 | whatever I was last working on,
it's saved in that very same state.
| | 03:11 | On a Mac, the Temporary folder is
kind of hidden as well and at the Header
| | 03:17 | menu, click Go, Go to Folder, and type-
in /tmp in the name of the folder that
| | 03:24 | you want to go to.
| | 03:25 | When you click Go, the Mac will reveal
that there is actually a private folder
| | 03:29 | on your Mac hard-drive and in
that folder is the Temp folder.
| | 03:33 | Here we have been rendering at a
sequence, so here is all the JPEGs that we
| | 03:38 | have been rendering.
| | 03:39 | Then down here is the quit.blend file
that you can use to resume your last
| | 03:44 | session when you last quit Blender.
| | 03:47 | The other thing that happens if you
are a Maya user or something like that, a
| | 03:50 | complicated scene can take a
half an hour to load or save.
| | 03:54 | Blender has a very, very efficient
file structure and writes out the memory
| | 03:59 | to disk very fast.
| | 04:01 | So you can actually do 5, 10
minute saves even on very large files.
| | 04:06 | It doesn't take that long
to load and save these files.
| | 04:10 | Every time I do a File > Save by the
way, I don't overwrite the last version.
| | 04:16 | What happens is if I save this file out
based on the number of versions I have
| | 04:22 | specified here, and I'm going to go
ahead and go to my Exercise Files and look
| | 04:29 | here under Modeling.
| | 04:30 | Okay, here is an example.
| | 04:32 | I was working on this Arms-Complete
file, and every time I did a File > Save,
| | 04:37 | what happens is Blender
doesn't overwrite that file.
| | 04:40 | What it does is it takes that file and
it copies it to blend1, and if there was
| | 04:44 | a blend1, it copies it
first to blend2 and so forth.
| | 04:47 | So you have this kind of trickle down
theory of blend files that in this case,
| | 04:52 | I'm going to save up to 5 versions.
| | 04:54 | So I'm going to have a blend, which
is the last save, a blend1 which is the
| | 05:00 | save before that, a blend2 which is
the save before that, the blend3, and the
| | 05:05 | blend4, and the blend5.
| | 05:06 | So I'm going to have 6 files here
that provide file-level or incremental
| | 05:12 | save backups.
| | 05:13 | Let's say I do some work in this file
here, and I save it and I do some more
| | 05:18 | work that just totally messes it up.
| | 05:20 | I can just go in here and just
reopen this blend1 or blend2 file.
| | 05:26 | They are formatted exactly the same,
they are actually just a blend file, and I
| | 05:29 | can just actually double-click on them,
or just use the File > Open command to
| | 05:34 | just open them up as a regular blend file,
and then pick backup from that point.
| | 05:38 | Also, Blender helps me
out with the recent files.
| | 05:42 | So when I do like File > Open, if I come
down here with my little selector, it's
| | 05:48 | going to show me the ten most
recently last used files that I have used.
| | 05:53 | Blender also can save a preview image
of the blend file based on of what's
| | 05:58 | in the scene.
| | 05:59 | Most of the time, if after I have
been working and I want to go back to my
| | 06:03 | last like say work of 5 minutes ago,
Open Recent sometimes can find this file
| | 06:11 | and open it up.
| | 06:12 | Now, another location to find these
Temp files was over here under File Paths,
| | 06:17 | you have a Temp folder
specification to say where the Temp folder is.
| | 06:22 | In this case c:/tmp/.
| | 06:26 | So sometimes too files get thrown in
there that you can then use to reopen.
| | 06:31 | So those are the several manual and
automatic ways that you can set up to make
| | 06:36 | sure that Blender saves your work on a
regular basis and prevents any loss of
| | 06:41 | data, or loss of work because
of crash or for whatever reason.
| | 06:45 | I really like to always save when I
have made some sort of a major milestone,
| | 06:49 | and I have got into a known steady state.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Appending and linking assets| 00:00 | Very often when you are starting off a
new project, you are not going to just
| | 00:03 | start creating everything from scratch.
You are going to want to go into a
| | 00:06 | library and pull out some stuff that
you have been working on or that your
| | 00:09 | team's been working on or that your
company has been working on and has used
| | 00:13 | and developed in the past, and
that's called Asset Management.
| | 00:17 | And the feature in Blender that allows
you to bring in those assets is called
| | 00:21 | Appending and Linking.
| | 00:22 | The purpose of this video is to show
you the different ways and discuss maybe
| | 00:26 | some of the different things that
you can use to set up reusable assets
| | 00:30 | within Blender.
| | 00:31 | Now there isn't any fixed folder,
structure or any kind of required or mandated
| | 00:37 | asset management structure to
your objects in your projects.
| | 00:41 | That's both a good thing and a bad thing.
| | 00:43 | The good part about that is you can
work with people on the other side of the
| | 00:46 | world and they can email you these
blend files and you can readily just open
| | 00:51 | them up and start working with them right away.
| | 00:54 | You can also do a File > Import and
Export of the blend file data to work with
| | 00:59 | other kinds of applications.
| | 01:00 | For example, the Autodesk formats
are supported as well as the common
| | 01:06 | interchange formats, like between
Max and Maya will import and export an
| | 01:11 | OBJ file.
| | 01:12 | The COLLADA file was kind of designed
to be a data exchange format and Blender
| | 01:18 | supports these by running an Import
script and then you can also run Export
| | 01:22 | scripts that export certain kinds of data.
| | 01:26 | So if we want to bring in an asset
from another blend file, we have to invoke
| | 01:30 | the Append or Link function here from
the menu or press Shift+F1 from a fairly
| | 01:35 | large 3D View and the window will change
to a special class of the file browser,
| | 01:41 | called an Asset Browser and it's going
to position itself to the last file that
| | 01:46 | you are working with and I
happened to be working with this file.
| | 01:49 | Your will be somewhere else in your
directory tree, so let me go through this
| | 01:53 | window real quick and show
you how to use it to navigate.
| | 01:57 | First of all, the P button
brings you up to the Parent directory.
| | 02:01 | As you can see here, I'm buried down
in my hard drive and Mac users, you will
| | 02:06 | probably be starting out
with like a volume over here.
| | 02:08 | Windows users, it's a C:
| | 02:10 | indicating your C drive.
| | 02:11 | Linux users will have probably a /
usr being your user folder, but this is
| | 02:17 | basically your path to your files
wherever you have them stored on your
| | 02:22 | particular computer.
| | 02:24 | My particular files for this exercise
are located under my Desktop, so I just
| | 02:30 | click on Desktop and that
navigates me down into that folder.
| | 02:34 | Under my exercise_files, under the
Library and now this is where you should
| | 02:38 | start to match up wherever you
have downloaded onto your hard drive.
| | 02:42 | This directory structure should now match yours.
| | 02:44 | So now I'm going to come under
Objects and select Captain Knowledge.blend.
| | 02:51 | When you click on that file, you dive in
to that file and you are exposed to all
| | 02:57 | of the different kinds of things
that are inside that file and in this
| | 03:01 | particular file, there are these
kinds of things available to you.
| | 03:05 | Now there are two separate kinds of
sets of things that are in Blender.
| | 03:10 | There are objects that you can look at
and see and touch and feel and work with,
| | 03:17 | and then there are types of objects
like types of meshes or types of materials.
| | 03:22 | So if you import let's say this
Yellow material and we are just going to go
| | 03:27 | ahead and load library.
| | 03:29 | It doesn't actually show up because it's there.
| | 03:31 | It's sitting in memory.
| | 03:33 | If we go ahead and press Space, Add
and Mesh, Plane and here is the plane
| | 03:38 | right here.
| | 03:39 | We now, when we come over to our
material system, we can see that -- and when we
| | 03:45 | click the Selector here, there is the Yellow.
| | 03:47 | It's sitting there, waiting for us and
so if we select it, now this plane is
| | 03:52 | going to be textured yellow and if
you press Z, you can see that it's
| | 03:55 | textured yellow.
| | 03:56 | So that's a way of importing types of
things so that they are in your memory, in
| | 04:01 | Blender, waiting to be used.
| | 04:03 | The other way to append or link
things is through the Append or Link
| | 04:08 | function, but instead what we are
going to do is go up a level and select the
| | 04:12 | Object itself.
| | 04:14 | Now the object in this
case is Captain Knowledge.
| | 04:18 | If we go ahead and we right-click and
then just kind of drag over all of these
| | 04:23 | things and click Link, what we are
going to do is establish a link between this
| | 04:29 | blank.blend file and this Captain
Knowledge.blend file and we are going to bring
| | 04:35 | these objects in, but we
are going to link to them.
| | 04:37 | And instead, if this object is still
being worked on, let's say it's being
| | 04:42 | drafted by another artist working in
that other file and saving his updates,
| | 04:46 | when we open up our file, Blender
will go out and grab the latest updates.
| | 04:52 | So we'll always have the latest updates here.
| | 04:54 | So you use Linking to just
establish a link to that other file and that
| | 04:59 | other object and linked objects are
shown over here as this little LI icon
| | 05:04 | in this little yellow box.
| | 05:07 | That tells us that's a little visual cue.
| | 05:09 | That tells us this object isn't ours.
| | 05:11 | It's actually linked and so we don't
actually own it, we are just kind of
| | 05:15 | borrowing it to use it or work on it.
| | 05:17 | Same thing over here in the
materials, you can see that little LI icon.
| | 05:21 | If at some point we want to break that
link, we can go ahead and make a local
| | 05:26 | copy of that object and bring it into
our file and now that the outline changes
| | 05:32 | from being that cyan, which indicates
that the object was a linked object, to
| | 05:38 | now the yellow that tells us
this is our own local copy.
| | 05:42 | So in addition to saving things out in
external files, we can also pack images
| | 05:48 | and pack information into the file
itself and that's found under here File >
| | 05:54 | External Data, Pack it into the blend file.
| | 05:57 | So for example, this Captain Knowledge
I happened to know that it uses an image
| | 06:02 | texture for his eyeball for the iris and
that was actually borrowed from another
| | 06:07 | asset library system.
| | 06:08 | So, to properly give somebody this file,
I would have to give them not only the
| | 06:13 | blend file, but also that image
file, which may be a PNG or a JPEG.
| | 06:17 | I have to give my 2 or 3 or 5 or in some
complicating cases, a couple 100 files,
| | 06:22 | which would be kind of difficult to manage.
| | 06:25 | What we can do is we can do File >
External Data, Pack into the blend file
| | 06:29 | and now everything that's used by
this particular scene is packed into this
| | 06:35 | one blend file.
| | 06:37 | So the blend file is like a mudball
kind of effect that it can store JPEGs and
| | 06:41 | PNGs and all that kind of good stuff
all inside of it and the packed files
| | 06:46 | indicated by this little Package icon
right here that shows you and indicates
| | 06:50 | that this is a packed file.
| | 06:52 | And then when I email this let's say to
the other side of the world, the person
| | 06:56 | that gets it can open the package,
unpack it back into either the original
| | 07:01 | location or other relative
locations and then be able to work on those
| | 07:06 | individual files by using any
kind of other external program.
| | 07:09 | For example, if they were image files,
then I could use Photoshop to touch
| | 07:13 | up the images.
| | 07:14 | So, reuse is really essential to
saving time and saving money and being more
| | 07:19 | productive and this tutorial then
showed you how to save your library blend
| | 07:24 | files for ease of reuse.
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| Using the open-source movies and assets| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:14 | (Bonk!)
| | 00:15 | (He-he-he-he. Squeaky laughter.)
| | 00:17 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:30 | (Smack!)
| | 00:32 | So there is a great example of an open movie.
| | 00:35 | Now an open movie is a thing that
the Blender Foundation started with the project
| | 00:42 | Orange, which resulted in the
movie called Elephants Dream, and that was
| | 00:47 | the first time ever that a movie and
all of the assets and the software that
| | 00:55 | was used to produce the movie were all
released to the public domain and now
| | 01:00 | Big Buck Bunny, the trailer which you
just saw is the second iteration of that experiment.
| | 01:06 | Ken, a production company that is
publicly funded and it's funded through the
| | 01:12 | pre-sales of the DVDs create some
visual imagery that is compelling and
| | 01:17 | entertaining, is loved by millions of
people and is put in the hands of the
| | 01:22 | users and that's called user generated
content and so that users can now take
| | 01:27 | these assets, use the software and
create their own movies based on these
| | 01:32 | reusable open assets.
| | 01:35 | And so, I think the answer is
absolutely Yes, that you can go in and have this
| | 01:40 | software running on your desktop
and be able to use all of that.
| | 01:44 | So let's go through, just take a few
minutes and if you have got the DVD, great.
| | 01:49 | If not, this will serve as a great
example to see how things are structured
| | 01:53 | and organized and the kinds of
things that are readily available for
| | 01:57 | downloading over the internet.
| | 01:59 | So I have put a link to some of these
assets, both the Orange and the Peach DVD
| | 02:03 | on my Desktop and the principal two
folders that we'll be using actually in
| | 02:08 | this course. I use some of these
blend files to demonstrate key concepts.
| | 02:13 | These are organized on
the DVD under two folders.
| | 02:16 | One is called production and then
the other is called simple_blends.
| | 02:21 | Simple_blends are simplified versions
of a lot of the stuff that is given away
| | 02:27 | so that you can open it up on your computer.
| | 02:30 | Within the production environment,
there is a whole bunch of stuff
| | 02:35 | organized into characters.
| | 02:37 | There is four or five main characters
in the movie and each of these is, for
| | 02:42 | example, the bird.blend.
| | 02:43 | You can open that up and you get the bird.
| | 02:46 | You get the bird, the rig, all of the
materials that went into it and a lot of
| | 02:50 | the reusable actions that the bird can do.
| | 02:53 | Also available, if you just go
ahead and just do a File > Open, is the
| | 02:58 | environments, the background, the
branches, the trees, the mushrooms, the
| | 03:03 | plants, the rocks, the apples, every
element in that movie is right here
| | 03:08 | and readily available.
| | 03:09 | We have the matte paintings, props and
then every scene that was used in the
| | 03:14 | movie is constructed here, which
links in all of these assets too.
| | 03:19 | Now some of these files can
get very large, very complicated.
| | 03:22 | This is a professional production
and they were done on the 8 gig Solaris
| | 03:26 | workstations I believe.
| | 03:28 | Some of them are pretty hairy, pretty complex.
| | 03:31 | Most of them though you can
open up the individual ones.
| | 03:34 | You may not be able to do a render
of them at their full production movie
| | 03:39 | quality, but by just making a few
reductions in the particle system and like that,
| | 03:44 | that you will learn about in
this course, you will be able to get a
| | 03:47 | good render out of it.
| | 03:48 | Under mattes, for example, under
textures, are dozens and dozens and hundreds
| | 03:54 | and total of all of the different
matte paintings and textures that were used
| | 03:58 | in the movie, so please, by all means
feel free to browse these libraries and
| | 04:04 | reuse these assets.
| | 04:05 | And in fact, I don't create eyeballs
anymore. I just come in here and grab the
| | 04:10 | eyeball which gives me the texture and
the cornea and all that mesh shape and
| | 04:13 | saves me so much time when
I'm doing my own projects.
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|
|
2. ModelingWorking with objects in 3D space| 00:01 | When you first start out in modeling
and computer graphics, you are presented
| | 00:05 | with this screen that presents
a viewport into your 3D world.
| | 00:09 | Now, your 3D world is almost like you
are floating in space and you can go in
| | 00:14 | any direction for almost an
unlimited amount of distance.
| | 00:17 | And your 3D view shows you this virtual reality.
| | 00:23 | Inside to this reality we have a
couple of default objects that are already
| | 00:27 | there to kind of give you a sense of
perspective and help you orient yourself.
| | 00:31 | And we have the cube
| | 00:32 | that's positioned in the center
and we have a ground plane here.
| | 00:36 | So, we can kind of think of ourselves
as sitting here with the camera, looking
| | 00:40 | out of the cube, sitting on this ground
plane and by clicking the middle mouse
| | 00:46 | button, we can view and rotate
in any direction that we want.
| | 00:51 | Now a 3D space, you have to
have some orientation, some axis.
| | 00:55 | So what we have adopted and what I'd like
to work in is the X, Y, Z coordinate system.
| | 01:02 | You could think of Y as being in
front of you and going away from you.
| | 01:07 | X being left and right and
then Z being up and down.
| | 01:12 | So, if you looked up you would be
looking up into the Z direction, up into
| | 01:15 | the sky.
| | 01:17 | Now a typical CG scene consists of
hundreds of objects and the most of the time
| | 01:21 | you are going to be wanting to add
the objects into this virtual reality at some point.
| | 01:26 | Now in Blender, the object is always
added wherever the 3D cursor is, which is
| | 01:30 | this red and white dashed circle.
| | 01:32 | So, if we click somewhere we have
positioned that 3D cursor somewhere in that
| | 01:37 | space and when we press the Spacebar,
we get the Add menu, there's other menu
| | 01:43 | options there that I'll explain later.
| | 01:45 | But here's the kinds of objects
that you can add into your 3D space.
| | 01:49 | There's mesh objects.
| | 01:51 | Now Mesh object is like the skin of
something and that outside part has a
| | 01:56 | materials and textures and
things that we'll get into.
| | 01:59 | And those Meshes, what we call Meshes
or other people call them polygonal
| | 02:03 | surfaces, consist of a couple of
primitives and we build up a very
| | 02:07 | complicated model from very simple primitives.
| | 02:11 | Primitives that are readily supported
by Blender include a Plane, a Cube, a
| | 02:15 | Circle, a UVsphere, which is a
sphere, a regular ball if you will,
| | 02:21 | an Icosphere, which is a special kind
of ball that looks like a soccer ball,
| | 02:25 | a Cylinder and a Cone.
| | 02:28 | So if you add say a ball, click on
UVsphere and for most of those primitives a
| | 02:33 | sub-menu will come up that allows you
to tailor how big the object is initially
| | 02:38 | in Blender units and then how detailed it is.
| | 02:41 | Let's go ahead and accept the defaults for now.
| | 02:44 | And now we have added a ball into our scene.
| | 02:47 | We can move this ball by pressing G,
which grabs the ball, and then as we move
| | 02:54 | our mouse cursor the ball moves with it.
| | 02:59 | If we wanted to make the ball
smaller or bigger, we want to scale it.
| | 03:03 | So if we press S and move the mouse
towards the object, it scales it down
| | 03:09 | and makes it smaller.
| | 03:10 | If we move the mouse away
from the object, it scales it up.
| | 03:14 | It's almost as if the mouse cursor was
pulling on this thing to make it bigger.
| | 03:20 | The other thing we can do is
rotate the object and rotating a ball
| | 03:24 | doesn't really show much.
| | 03:25 | So I'm going to right-click on the
cube and we are going to press R and then
| | 03:28 | that rotates the cube around
whatever perspective the 3D view is in and
| | 03:34 | rotates the cube.
| | 03:36 | If we don't want the cube anymore
we can press X and that deletes it.
| | 03:43 | If we select something and we press X
by accident and we don't want to delete it,
| | 03:48 | simply move your mouse outside of
that pop-up window and that pop-up window
| | 03:52 | will go away and Blender will not
execute that action. That aborts that action.
| | 03:57 | The other way to select objects in 3D
views, what we call the bounding box
| | 04:00 | selection and we have
let's say these lights here.
| | 04:04 | So if you press B, your
cursor changes to a crosshair.
| | 04:08 | I hope you can see that in the training video.
| | 04:10 | If you left click and drag your cursor
now, you are actually making a box and
| | 04:15 | when you let up everything that was
partially within that box is selected.
| | 04:21 | To deselect the things you press B again,
and now this time you can right-click
| | 04:26 | and drag and now everything that falls
within the box when you let up on the
| | 04:30 | button is deselected.
| | 04:33 | Now as you add objects to your 3D scene.
| | 04:36 | it's going to get kind of busy.
So here we are going to add a Plane.
| | 04:40 | We are going to add a NURBS Curve,
we are going to add some text and as we
| | 04:47 | add these elements our scene can get
filled up pretty quickly and get pretty complicated.
| | 04:53 | So Blender supports the notion of
layers where we have different objects on
| | 04:58 | different layers and then when we
want to work on certain objects that are
| | 05:02 | related, we just select only that layer.
| | 05:05 | So right now we are going to look at
only Layer 1 and as you can see, we have
| | 05:09 | most of our stuff on Layer 1.
| | 05:11 | But when I clicked on Layer 1
some other things went away.
| | 05:14 | That ground plane went away.
| | 05:16 | Where did it go?
| | 05:17 | Well, it's over here and Blender
shows you where things are and if there's
| | 05:21 | something is on the layer it shows you
by having a dot on that little layer.
| | 05:25 | So, if I just left-click on that layer
button, I see that this layer, Layer 10,
| | 05:30 | they are numbered 1 through 5, 6
through 10, 11 through 15 and 16 through 20.
| | 05:36 | Now this layer has three objects
on it, the Plane and two lights.
| | 05:42 | If I want to move something to another
layer, I press the M key to move it and
| | 05:47 | then just click the layer
that I want it to be on.
| | 05:52 | Now that layer has a little dot that
tells me that something is on that layer.
| | 05:58 | To select multiple layers, I just hold
the Shift key and select those layers and
| | 06:03 | now everything is selected.
| | 06:05 | I can just very quickly select all of
the layers by pressing the Tilde key,
| | 06:10 | which is Shift and then you hit the
button on the American keyboard right next
| | 06:15 | to the 1 at the top of your keyboard.
| | 06:17 | That selects all of the layers.
| | 06:19 | All right so that's basic
mousing around objects in 3D space.
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| Navigating 3D views| 00:00 | When we look into our 3D space and
especially when we are modeling, we need to
| | 00:04 | have some fixed reference perspectives
that we can consistently go back to in
| | 00:08 | order to be precise in our modeling.
| | 00:10 | Our brain has to perceive this 3D
space as real and it has to be able to jive
| | 00:16 | with our notion of reality, so
that we can model things accurately.
| | 00:20 | Now, I know that we are in a user
perspective here because I'm looking at our
| | 00:23 | little Access Orientation icon down
here in the lower left-hand corner and
| | 00:28 | it's showing me the different
orientation as I move the perspective around.
| | 00:34 | When I press 3 on the num pad I'm
looking at the side view, but it would be
| | 00:38 | nice if Blender would tell me
that I was looking in the side view.
| | 00:41 | So, let's turn that on now by coming up
to our User Preferences and in our Views
| | 00:46 | & Controls context, click on View Name.
| | 00:50 | Now the name of the view
is showing in the 3D view.
| | 00:53 | So, now we can say that okay, now I'm
looking at the right, now I'm looking at
| | 00:57 | the front and now I'm looking
at it how I want to look at it.
| | 01:01 | As we are modeling, when we want to
work on this side, we can switch to side
| | 01:06 | view and then when we want to work
on the front, we can switch to front view,
| | 01:08 | but that quickly becomes
pretty tiring to keep switching this view
| | 01:11 | back and forth.
| | 01:13 | So, what I have done is create another
Desktop layout that has multiple views
| | 01:18 | active at the same time.
| | 01:19 | If you come up here and select Desktop
Screen Layout number 2-Model 4-up, we now
| | 01:25 | have a Screen Layout that has four 3D views.
| | 01:29 | Each of the 3D View windowpanes is
oriented a different way. As you can see we
| | 01:34 | have Top, Front, Right and the Camera.
| | 01:37 | Each of these views is looking at
the cube from a different perspective.
| | 01:41 | It's almost like we have four
different people in our 3D space, looking in on
| | 01:45 | our view from their different perspectives.
| | 01:48 | Now we do this so that we
are a lot more productive.
| | 01:50 | If I want to work on this side a
little bit, I can work in this window.
| | 01:54 | But then if I want to hop over and
work on the top of the cube, I can come
| | 01:57 | over and just move my mouse over into
this window and I don't have to switch
| | 02:01 | the actual view around.
| | 02:03 | As I move my cube in one view, it moves
in all the other views as you can see,
| | 02:09 | according to how I'm moving it.
| | 02:11 | So, all of the views are updated
and then synchronized immediately.
| | 02:14 | Then when we are modeling something
very precise, we want to use what's
| | 02:18 | called Orthographic Mode, which is a
grid type of layout where we can use
| | 02:22 | and do blueprints and use blueprints
as reference images to model something
| | 02:26 | very precisely.
| | 02:28 | However, our eye does not see things
like that and when we look through the camera,
| | 02:33 | we see things from a perspective
view point, which is where things are
| | 02:37 | distorted the further they
go away from or towards us.
| | 02:40 | So to switch any view into a Perspective
Mode, you just press 5 on your num pad.
| | 02:45 | Now, when I look through this
view, it looks a little more real.
| | 02:48 | It looks a little more like the way I
would see it and helps my brain perceive
| | 02:53 | that this is a real cube.
| | 02:55 | To switch the view back, I just press 5
again and to switch this back to the Top view,
| | 03:00 | I just press 7.
| | 03:01 | Now these views are laid out the
same way they are on your num pad.
| | 03:05 | If you look at your num pad on your
keyboard, you have the 3 here, the 1 in this
| | 03:09 | lower-left position and the 7 in the upper-left.
| | 03:13 | Now as the scene gets pretty
complicated and I'm working in these different views,
| | 03:16 | I probably don't want to be
distracted by all of this other stuff
| | 03:20 | that's in this scene.
| | 03:21 | So to look at just this cube, I'll
activate Local Mode, which is the Slash key
| | 03:26 | on the keypad.
| | 03:28 | Now, only this cube is shown in this view.
| | 03:31 | To go back to the Global view,
I just press Slash again.
| | 03:35 | Now all of these settings and views, if
in case, you forget all the num pad keys
| | 03:38 | or whatever, they are all in the View
menu and they are listed right here for
| | 03:43 | you and you can select them from here.
| | 03:45 | So, as you are modeling, use these
different views to get the right perspective,
| | 03:49 | so that your brain can
perceive this space as real.
| | 03:52 | To switch to the other side, right now
I'm looking at the right hand side, if I
| | 03:56 | want to look at the left side,
I just press the Ctrl key and hit the
| | 03:59 | appropriate num pad key.
| | 04:01 | So Ctrl+3 makes me look at the left
side or just the 3 makes me look at
| | 04:05 | the right side.
| | 04:06 | If I want to look at this cube, like
as if I was underneath it looking up,
| | 04:11 | I just can switch to Bottom view by
pressing Ctrl+7 over here and now I'm
| | 04:16 | looking up at the cube.
| | 04:18 | So being able to select and change
these views is essential to great modeling.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding Blender modes| 00:01 | Now so far, I have been working with
this cube as a whole object. When I press G
| | 00:04 | and grab and move the object,
I'm moving the entire object.
| | 00:08 | And you can tell that the whole object
is moving because the yellow dot that
| | 00:11 | represents the center of the
cube moves with the whole object.
| | 00:16 | But when we get into modeling and
editing and working with this cube, we want to
| | 00:21 | change the shape of the cube.
| | 00:23 | In order to change the shape of the
cube into something else, we have to go
| | 00:27 | into Edit Mode.
| | 00:28 | Now in Edit Mode, when I Shift+Select
some of the vertices and press G to grab them,
| | 00:34 | I'm moving just those vertices and
these vertices, along with the edges and
| | 00:39 | the faces, change the actual
shape of the cube into something else.
| | 00:44 | I haven't moved the cube as an
object, but I have changed the shape.
| | 00:48 | Now, the other way to change shape
is in the Sculpt Mode and when we are
| | 00:52 | Sculpting Mode, we use some pretty
advanced sculpting tools, just like a real
| | 00:56 | sculptor to change the shape of the mesh.
| | 00:59 | I have a whole another
video on sculpting later on.
| | 01:03 | The other modes,
| | 01:04 | the Vertex Paint Mode, is used to
give the cube some color according to
| | 01:09 | the vertex colors.
| | 01:10 | Texture Paint Mode is used when we
actually paint this cube in a very detailed
| | 01:15 | manner and create what's
called an Image Texture.
| | 01:18 | Weight Paint Mode is used when we are
animating and we want a certain bones
| | 01:22 | to affect certain areas of the mesh
and to change the shape of the mesh in a
| | 01:26 | different way.
| | 01:27 | And so we actually paint the different
colors on to the mesh that represent how
| | 01:31 | much that bone is going to
affect the shape of the mesh.
| | 01:35 | So, all of these modes allow us to
exercise control over how the mesh is
| | 01:40 | changed, how the shape changes or how
it's colored or how it's affected by
| | 01:45 | other objects.
| | 01:46 | And that's a quick overview of the
different modes we have for working
| | 01:49 | with objects in Blender.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding meshes| 00:00 | So when we talk about editing a mesh,
I thought it would be helpful to look at
| | 00:04 | something that's already been done and
this is the rabbit from Big Buck Bunny.
| | 00:08 | So, let's just look at a mesh and see
what it's composed of and see what kind of
| | 00:12 | components there are to a mesh object.
| | 00:14 | So, we've talked about the different
modes, how you can select the mode here
| | 00:18 | from the Header menu or you can just
press Tab on your keyboard and that tabs
| | 00:22 | you right into Edit Mode.
| | 00:24 | And here you see all of the vertices,
now there is a lot more than the 8
| | 00:27 | vertices that there were in the cube.
| | 00:30 | But this object started out as a
simple cube and all of the different mesh
| | 00:34 | editing tools were used to create this shape.
| | 00:38 | Right now, we are looking at the vertices.
| | 00:41 | These little blue dots are the vertices
that make up and define the shape of the mesh.
| | 00:46 | That's indicated down here in your
Header bar under Vertex select mode.
| | 00:51 | We can look at the edges, which is the
lines that are connecting these vertices
| | 00:55 | together, and right-click and select
now just the edges that define the mesh.
| | 01:00 | And you can see that sometimes I'm
selecting the edges that are on the front
| | 01:03 | side and sometime I'm selecting edges
that are on the back side, namely on this
| | 01:07 | little bunny tail there.
| | 01:10 | If that's kind of distracting, you
can hide that by occluding, which means
| | 01:14 | to make it invisible, any background
geometry and now I'm looking at just
| | 01:18 | the front.
| | 01:19 | Also, I want to note too that we
can turn Off this grid that's in the
| | 01:22 | background, a lot of people find that a
little confusing, by going to our View
| | 01:27 | Properties and turning Off Grid Floor.
| | 01:30 | Now it looks not as distracting.
| | 01:32 | We can of course use all of the
standard window Pan & Zoom controls to zoom in
| | 01:37 | on any pushing of the mesh by using the
middle mouse wheel and/or clicking the
| | 01:42 | middle mouse wheel and holding
down the Shift key to pan and zoom and
| | 01:46 | translate the view.
| | 01:47 | So that we can see this
mesh that we are working on.
| | 01:50 | The last component of a mesh is the Faces.
| | 01:52 | Now, if we look at the Faces, these are
the surfaces that are connected by the
| | 01:58 | edges and the edges are defined by the vertices.
| | 02:01 | So that's how vertices, edges, and
faces go together to create this mesh
| | 02:05 | shape that we see.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Editing a mesh| 00:00 | So let's get started and work with the mesh.
| | 00:03 | First, we'll tab into Edit Mode, and
now when we go into Edit Mode, I want you
| | 00:06 | to notice that your menu options change
as well your tools change and we covered
| | 00:10 | some of these tools before, and we'll
cover these other tools in other videos.
| | 00:13 | What's different here is the menu now
has a Mesh menu and I'd just like to
| | 00:17 | go through and point out the
different menu options that are available
| | 00:21 | because there is just a ton of
different mesh editing tools that are
| | 00:24 | available in Blender.
| | 00:26 | To start with, let's look at the Vertices.
| | 00:28 | We can take the Vertices and we can
merge two vertices together, rip them apart,
| | 00:33 | split them, separate them, smooth them.
| | 00:36 | We can also delete a vertice just like
we can delete an object by pressing X. So
| | 00:41 | if I want to delete this vertice, I
just press X and that deletes that vertice.
| | 00:47 | Now I have sort of a stage backdrop.
| | 00:49 | Ctrl+Z undoes any mesh editing step
that you have done and Ctrl+Y will redo it.
| | 00:57 | We can also work with the edges of a
mesh and bevel them and subdivide them, and
| | 01:02 | let's subdivide this cube now.
| | 01:04 | Press A to select all of the vertices
and press W to bring up the Specials menu.
| | 01:11 | This is another set of mesh editing
features that are available to you.
| | 01:15 | Let's just go ahead and select
Subdivide Multi and cut each edge into two
| | 01:21 | sections, which means that each
edge will now have three sections.
| | 01:26 | I can now let go into Face Select Mode
where I'm working with the faces and just
| | 01:31 | select one of the faces.
| | 01:32 | I'm going to put away my widget
here because it's little distracting.
| | 01:36 | Now I can extrude edges and faces and
vertices by pressing E and then moving
| | 01:41 | the mouse.
| | 01:42 | Now Blender automatically knows that
this face is on top of the cube and when I
| | 01:46 | want to extrude it, I probably want to
go ahead and just bring it straight up
| | 01:50 | and down and so it shows that axis
constraint, that pink line that helps guide
| | 01:54 | me so that I extrude this
face straight out from the cube.
| | 01:58 | Click to drop it and now I
have a temple shape starting.
| | 02:02 | I can also extrude sets of vertices by
Shift+Selecting the multiple vertices and
| | 02:08 | pressing E, and now I can extrude just
the vertices themselves or the edges.
| | 02:12 | I'm going to extrude up an edge, I
get the whole face along with it.
| | 02:21 | Now when I extrude and I select only
vertices, I get only the vertices connected
| | 02:27 | back to the vertices that I'm
extruding from but I don't get the face.
| | 02:31 | To connect these two vertices and form
an edge, I'll press F, which gives me an
| | 02:37 | edge between these two vertices.
| | 02:40 | To make a face and a surface between
these four vertices, I can Shift+Select
| | 02:45 | all four vertices and press F and now
I have a face that I can texture and
| | 02:50 | color and see.
| | 02:52 | Those are the main mesh editing tools
that are available in 3D space that will
| | 02:56 | get you going as well as the
different menus and menu options.
| | 03:00 | In addition, there is a whole bunch
of other panel options that are used in
| | 03:04 | either Object Mode or Editing Mode
and these panels contain tons of tools
| | 03:09 | that you can use to make very
advanced changes and different shapes and
| | 03:14 | adjustments to your mesh.
| | 03:17 | So a dense mesh object may consist of
thousands of vertices, each of which needs
| | 03:22 | to be placed in Edit Mode and then
surfaced to make your completed mesh object.
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| Using the Mirror modifier| 00:00 | Now when you are creating a mesh that
consists of thousands or millions of
| | 00:03 | vertices, you don't have to do
all of that modeling work yourself.
| | 00:07 | Blender can help you if you give
it some rules for it to follow.
| | 00:10 | So when editing an object, these rules
are called modifiers because they modify
| | 00:15 | the object for you according
to the rules which you set up.
| | 00:19 | The first modifier I'd like to
talk about is the Mirror Modifier.
| | 00:22 | Now many objects are symmetric like a
chair, or a lamp, or an egg, or a car.
| | 00:28 | They look the same according to some axis.
| | 00:31 | So here we have a sphere and let's tab
into Edit Mode and just for fun, let's go
| | 00:36 | ahead and delete half of the vertices.
| | 00:39 | Press B, drag your mouse over,
select half of the vertices, press X to
| | 00:44 | delete those vertices.
| | 00:46 | Feel free to play with the other
options there on deleting in any of
| | 00:49 | the submenus.
| | 00:50 | So now we have half of a sphere.
| | 00:52 | If we tab out of Edit Mode, and add a
modifier to that sphere, come over here to
| | 00:58 | the panels, click the Add Modifier and
as you can see, we have just a ton of
| | 01:03 | different modifiers that
we can add to this object.
| | 01:06 | One of which is Mirror.
| | 01:07 | Now all of a sudden over here in 3D View,
that deleted half of the sphere just
| | 01:13 | came back in from somewhere.
| | 01:14 | Where did that come from?
| | 01:15 | Well, the Mirror Modifier by default
anything on the right side of the X-axis,
| | 01:21 | it mirrors it on the left side.
| | 01:24 | So if we tab into Edit Mode, we can see
that we only have the actual vertices on
| | 01:29 | one side but Blender fills
in the other side for us.
| | 01:33 | If we make any changes to one side of
this sphere, by say grabbing and moving
| | 01:39 | these vertices, notice how it's
also mirrored on the other side for us.
| | 01:46 | The other axis that you can mirror on
is the Y-axis and the Z-axis and in fact,
| | 01:52 | if you select and delete the bottom
half of the vertices, deselect those
| | 01:58 | vertices that we picked before and delete them.
| | 02:01 | Now we can also mirror by pressing
Shift to Shift+Select both the X and the Z.
| | 02:10 | Now I have a quarter of the sphere,
which is being mirror modified to create
| | 02:15 | both a left and a right, and a top
and a bottom and of course, if I go into
| | 02:20 | top view and delete the back half of
the vertices and Shift+Select the Y. Now
| | 02:30 | all I have to do is modify a model,
a quarter of this sphere to create an
| | 02:40 | entire object.
| | 02:44 | Using modifiers then, I can very
quickly reduce the number of vertices that I
| | 02:50 | have to work with in order to
create and modify the entire shape.
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| Working with Vertex groups| 00:00 | As you get a pretty complex mesh, it's
essential that you be able to isolate
| | 00:04 | different parts of the mesh and only
work on the vertices associated with
| | 00:08 | the particular group.
| | 00:10 | So in this video, we are going to go
over how to establish what's called
| | 00:13 | the Vertex Groups.
| | 00:14 | So we tab into Edit Mode.
| | 00:16 | Let's go ahead and press A to select
none of the vertices and then press B to
| | 00:20 | select the vertices from his left hand.
| | 00:24 | Over here in the Editing Context, in
the Links and Materials panel, we have
| | 00:28 | two sets of controls.
| | 00:31 | Here is the Vertex Group.
| | 00:34 | To create a new vertex group, just click
New and a new vertex group is loaded in
| | 00:38 | and its name by default is Group.
| | 00:41 | So let's go ahead and click there
to rename that something meaningful
| | 00:45 | like Hand.L for left.
| | 00:49 | Now the reason I'm going to do that
is because Blender has some automatic
| | 00:52 | features for renaming and copying
groups from the left to the right for
| | 00:56 | symmetric objects that we talked about before.
| | 00:58 | After we've created the group, we
actually haven't assigned any vertices to
| | 01:01 | the group.
| | 01:02 | We need to go ahead and click Assign there.
| | 01:04 | And now those vertices are
part of the Hand.L group.
| | 01:09 | So let's press A to deselect them and
now we can come over and click Select or
| | 01:15 | if we want to work on just the hand
group, a common workflow is to press A to
| | 01:20 | select all of the vertices, deselect the
hand group and then press H to hide the
| | 01:28 | vertices that were selected.
| | 01:29 | And so now in my virtual 3D space, I
only see the hand vertices and I can zoom
| | 01:34 | in and work on them in detail.
| | 01:36 | If I don't want a group anymore,
of course I can just press Delete.
| | 01:40 | To unhide vertices, I press Alt+H and
that's a very common thing in Blender that
| | 01:46 | I want to talk about a little bit.
| | 01:47 | Whenever you have a hot key to do
something, to undo that or do the reverse of
| | 01:52 | it, you just pull the Alt
key and press the same letter.
| | 01:55 | So H to hide, Alt+H to unhide.
| | 01:58 | Now we go through our
model and create many groups.
| | 02:01 | Now you can do this after that mesh
has been modeled or you can do it while
| | 02:06 | you are modeling the mesh and extruding
those vertices, for example, to make the ear.
| | 02:10 | So now we click New, type in
Ear and Assign those vertices.
| | 02:15 | So now we have two groups, when you
click the Selector, all of the existing
| | 02:20 | vertex groups for that mesh, pop-
up here and we can select them.
| | 02:24 | Press A and then just click Select.
| | 02:27 | So that's a little bit about defining,
creating, and using Vertex Groups to
| | 02:32 | isolate portions of a very complex mesh.
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| Using Bézier curves| 00:00 | In addition to meshes, Blender offers a
lot of other kinds of objects that we're
| | 00:04 | going to talk about in this video,
one of which is Bezier curves.
| | 00:08 | Now let's go ahead and select Layer 2,
so that we are looking at a new blank
| | 00:12 | layer and press Spacebar, Add > Curve.
| | 00:16 | Now Blender supports two basic kinds of
curved objects and surfaces, the NURBS
| | 00:23 | Curves and Surfaces as well as Bezier curves.
| | 00:26 | Now a Bezier Curve and Circle can be
a two-dimensional or three-dimensional
| | 00:31 | object, 2D makes a Flash kind of object.
| | 00:33 | So let's go ahead and select that.
| | 00:35 | When we click there, it's been added
into the View and already oriented towards
| | 00:40 | our particular perspective.
| | 00:42 | As an object, the curve is simply a line,
but when we tab in to it, we see that
| | 00:46 | the line instead of being connected
by vertices, I'm going to turn off my
| | 00:49 | little widget here.
| | 00:51 | It's actually composed of handles.
| | 00:53 | As I grab and move a handle, I move the
curve just like a French Curve that you
| | 00:58 | used in your drafting class, if you took that.
| | 01:00 | If I select one of the end points of
the handle and press G, I'm changing the
| | 01:05 | influence or the amount of deformation
that end point exercises over the rest
| | 01:11 | of the curve.
| | 01:12 | Bezier curves are extruded the
same way, I press E, and I extrude out
| | 01:18 | another handle point.
| | 01:20 | Then I can rotate the handle point
by pressing R and scale the handle by
| | 01:26 | pressing S and moving the mouse, just
exactly the same as we do objects and
| | 01:30 | faces when we're editing meshes.
| | 01:32 | I can extrude a couple of more points here.
| | 01:35 | Now once we have our basic shape
defined, we want to close this curve by
| | 01:43 | pressing C. That closes the circle
and makes a constrained curve surface in
| | 01:50 | two-dimensions that we can use as a
mask or as an element in a composite image.
| | 01:57 | By default, curve objects are two-dimensional.
| | 01:59 | If I come here to Solid view
and see it's just two-dimensional.
| | 02:04 | I get rid of my grid.
| | 02:06 | It's just a two-dimensional object.
| | 02:10 | This could be the wing of
Batman or somebody like that.
| | 02:13 | We can also make it a three-dimensional
curve by enabling 3D here in the Editing
| | 02:18 | panel under Curve and Surface panels.
| | 02:20 | Now when I go into Edit mode,
I have a directed path curve.
| | 02:25 | When I change my handle location in 3D
space, the object deforms to be a smooth
| | 02:31 | surface in 3D space.
| | 02:34 | So I can use this now, for example,
be the path for a roller coaster.
| | 02:38 | There are other options for working
with this curve in 2D and 3D space here in
| | 02:43 | these panels and these controls under
Curve and Surface, Curve tools and yet
| | 02:47 | another set of controls
in the Curve Tools1 panel.
| | 02:52 | Ultimately, we want to convert this into a mesh.
| | 02:54 | So that's an object function that we
can access from the menu, or we can just
| | 02:58 | press Alt+C to bring up the Convert Object Type.
| | 03:02 | A three-dimensional curve is converted
to a mesh, and now if I tab into Edit
| | 03:07 | Mode, the curve is a series of points,
vertices that form a mesh surface.
| | 03:13 | I can skin this surface by selecting
all the vertices and pressing Shift+F. Now
| | 03:19 | Blender goes through and it
connects all the dots together.
| | 03:23 | I find it a lot easier to work with the
3D curve, get it the shape I want, and
| | 03:27 | then convert it to a mesh, and then I
can do materials and textures, and shape
| | 03:32 | keys, and animations on the mesh object,
once I have it defined in 3D space.
| | 03:37 | So curves are great tools for
tracing and modeling organic objects and
| | 03:41 | then converting them into 3D meshes
and they are guaranteed to have nice,
| | 03:46 | smooth outlines.
| | 03:47 | By setting them smooth, Blender will
render them as a nice smooth object.
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| Working with text objects| 00:00 | Blender has a very powerful facility
for working with text. You'll find that in
| | 00:04 | compositing and titling and
doing a lot of work with text.
| | 00:07 | So let's go ahead and click on
Layer 2 here and that kind of clears
| | 00:11 | everything out since nothing is on
Layer 2, so that we have a pretty clear
| | 00:14 | workspace to work from.
| | 00:17 | Come up here and click-and-
drag down our User Preferences.
| | 00:21 | If we select Edit Methods and
Aligned to View, then when we add the text
| | 00:26 | objects, they will be
aligned to the Camera view.
| | 00:29 | To add text, we just either poke in
3D view or press Space, Add and Text.
| | 00:35 | The text object comes in.
| | 00:36 | We're going to tab into Edit Mode and
now we can change this text to whatever it
| | 00:41 | is that we want to say.
| | 00:42 | So we'll type in Hello
World and press Tab to exit.
| | 00:49 | Now we can position this text
wherever we want, just by grabbing it and we
| | 00:53 | can rotate it.
| | 00:55 | If we want to make it bigger or smaller,
we can scale it by pressing G, R or S,
| | 01:00 | just like any other object.
| | 01:02 | So let's go ahead and bring the camera
back into view here by Shift-clicking on
| | 01:07 | Layer 1 or just holding the Shift key
and pressing the Tilde key, so now all of
| | 01:12 | the objects are here.
| | 01:14 | If we switch to Camera view by pressing
0 on the keypad, we can now see that the
| | 01:19 | text is within our Camera view.
| | 01:23 | Another way, instead of just manually
entering text is to use the Text Editor.
| | 01:28 | So we just go Text > Open and this
window changes to a File Browser where we can
| | 01:34 | then navigate to your exercise
files and click on the Opening.txt file.
| | 01:39 | It's just the simple text file.
| | 01:40 | This might be ad copy that you've
gotten from the copywriter that you want
| | 01:44 | to add to the scene.
| | 01:47 | Once we have the text loaded, we can
automatically convert this text to an
| | 01:51 | Object menu by clicking on the Edit
menu and selecting Text to 3D Object.
| | 01:56 | Now we have two options.
| | 01:57 | We can convert each line of text to a
separate object that we can then move
| | 02:02 | around and position independently or
we can take this entire text object and
| | 02:06 | create it as one object.
| | 02:08 | I'm going to go ahead and
select one object per line here.
| | 02:12 | Now I have four lines of text, but I
have four separate objects that I can
| | 02:17 | select, move, grab, scale
independently and position them wherever I want
| | 02:24 | them to be.
| | 02:27 | Those are the basic controls for text,
but there is also a lot of more finer
| | 02:31 | controls to change the
appearance of the font and like that.
| | 02:34 | So with the text object selected,
if we come over here to our editing
| | 02:39 | buttons, I'm going to right-click and
resize this to be a vertical, so we can
| | 02:44 | see these panels.
| | 02:46 | We have a Font panel for a text object.
| | 02:49 | From here we can change the font that is used.
| | 02:52 | This is a default built-in font
that Blender comes loaded with.
| | 02:57 | Based on your operating system, within
Windows, your operating system fonts are
| | 03:01 | located within your C:\Windows\Fonts directory.
| | 03:05 | So we're going to go ahead and click P
a couple of times to come up to our root
| | 03:10 | directory C:\Windows and then select Fonts.
| | 03:14 | On your Mac systems, it's going to be,
if you'd go all the way up to your
| | 03:19 | Volumes directory and select then,
Macintosh Hard Drive and then under there,
| | 03:24 | select the Main Library folder and
then your Fonts folder, contains all of
| | 03:28 | your fonts.
| | 03:30 | Here we're going to use the Antiqua font.
| | 03:33 | So you just left-click on a
selected font and then click Select Font.
| | 03:38 | Now that font is loaded in here.
| | 03:41 | So for every other object that we want
to be in that same font, we can simply
| | 03:45 | click the right-hand side, Up/Down
Selector arrow and just pick that font
| | 03:49 | from the list.
| | 03:51 | We can also pack this font into the Blend file.
| | 03:54 | If we're sharing this with other people,
then we can click this little Package
| | 03:57 | icon and pack this font into the file,
so that when we sent it over to them, if
| | 04:02 | they don't have this particular TrueType
font file on their computer, it will be
| | 04:06 | packed inside the Blend file.
| | 04:08 | We can also change the
Justification and make it centered.
| | 04:12 | I'm going to go ahead and switch here
to Solid view, so you can see maybe the
| | 04:15 | font a little better.
| | 04:17 | I have to get rid of that cube.
| | 04:21 | We can add a curve, and enter the
name of the curve here then the text will
| | 04:26 | curve around and not be square or straight.
| | 04:29 | We can change the size
manually here instead of scaling it.
| | 04:33 | We can change the interline spacing
if this was multiple lines of text.
| | 04:37 | We can change the sharing
or make it more italicized.
| | 04:42 | We can also create text frames over
here to have frames of text and then layout
| | 04:47 | frames like if we were
laying out a multicolumn ad copy.
| | 04:52 | We can also then down here, give
that font a little depth because it is
| | 04:56 | working in 3D and I'll scroll around
in here, so you can kind of see we're
| | 04:59 | making the font deeper.
| | 05:01 | We can also add a bevel and make sort
of softer, rounder look and increase the
| | 05:07 | resolution of that bevel to
make it finer and smoother.
| | 05:12 | That's a brief overview of working with
text in Blender, and as you can see, you
| | 05:16 | can create any kind of text object,
three-dimensional, three-dimensional and
| | 05:20 | arrange them in your 3D composition.
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| Using reference images| 00:01 | When we're modeling an object, very
often it's very helpful to have some sort
| | 00:04 | of a reference image to go by, and
there is just a ton of different reference images.
| | 00:09 | When we're modeling something precise,
we want what's called orthographic views,
| | 00:13 | and kind of a blueprint view of
the object we're going to model.
| | 00:16 | So let's go ahead into Model 4-up view.
| | 00:18 | I'm going to go ahead and hide all
of these default stuff, because we'll
| | 00:23 | eventually want the camera and the lights
and everything to render our CG object.
| | 00:27 | But for right now, I want to just
start on a new object, on Layer 2.
| | 00:31 | I'm just starting conventions now on how
I'm using my layers, which is something
| | 00:35 | you're going to have to do in your project.
| | 00:36 | So to bring in a background image as a
reference into a 3D view, all we need to
| | 00:42 | do is come over here to View > Background Image.
| | 00:46 | Tell Blender we want to use a
background image and load one up.
| | 00:49 | We have three LearningMan PNG images
from the front, the left and the rear.
| | 00:56 | Now if you recall, this window is the
Side view, so we want to choose left here.
| | 01:02 | Click Select Image and then click
anywhere in the view to activate the
| | 01:07 | background image for that particular windowpane.
| | 01:11 | Each windowpane can have a
separate and different background image.
| | 01:15 | So we're going to come over here and
for this view, we'll use the Front view.
| | 01:27 | We'll put these away and now we can
see that we have our background images,
| | 01:31 | however, now there is a debate,
and it's totally up to you.
| | 01:35 | Some people like to model their object
with the center of mass as the center of
| | 01:40 | the object, other people like to model
with their feet on the ground, namely the
| | 01:45 | feet at zero and the object at
zero, which is what I like to do.
| | 01:49 | So what we need to do is we need to
shift these background images up a
| | 01:53 | little bit.
| | 01:55 | To shift the background image,
we use these X and Y offsets.
| | 02:00 | Now I can see that his feet are down
here, which is 1, 2, 3, 4 units, too low,
| | 02:07 | so I want to bump him up by 4 units,
maybe a little bit more, as we zoom in on
| | 02:15 | his feet to make sure his feet
are firmly planted on the ground.
| | 02:19 | Then over here in the side,
we need to do the same thing.
| | 02:23 | If you're using images that are
orthogonally correct and they are blueprints
| | 02:27 | from the same perspective, you need to
offset them in corresponding views by
| | 02:31 | the same amount.
| | 02:35 | Now as I zoom in on this guy, I can
see this image is not exactly centered.
| | 02:40 | It's a little bit off.
| | 02:41 | So to move him left and
right, we use the X offset.
| | 02:44 | So by clicking once here on the little
arrow, I change the offset by a tenth of
| | 02:48 | the Blender unit and now it's all
perfectly lined up and perfectly symmetrical.
| | 02:52 | Hopefully, when you heard that word
symmetrical that warped you back to
| | 02:55 | the Mirror Modifier.
| | 02:56 | So you already know some of the tricks
I'm going to use to be able to rapidly
| | 02:59 | model this computer character.
| | 03:01 | I don't have a Top view, so
there is nothing I can use here.
| | 03:04 | I don't have a Right view.
| | 03:05 | So I'm going to have to do a little
bit of work to make sure that when I'm
| | 03:09 | modeling, my object is the
same in all perspectives.
| | 03:12 | But now, I'm all set up to use reference images.
| | 03:15 | I can also, I should note, scale
the image by changing the size here.
| | 03:20 | I can also use as a background
image, movies and image sequences.
| | 03:26 | So that's how you use reference images
as background images in your 3D space to
| | 03:31 | make sure that when you're modeling,
you model something accurately and
| | 03:35 | according to however the blueprints are.
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| Modeling boots by extruding circles and joining meshes| 00:00 | For the remaining videos in this
chapter, we are going to be doing some
| | 00:02 | heavy-duty mesh editing and so it might
behoove you to go back and review the
| | 00:06 | fifth video in this chapter which was
on mesh editing concepts, principles,
| | 00:11 | hot keys, techniques that you
can use to do the mesh editing.
| | 00:15 | So we decided to do some fun
and entertaining for this project.
| | 00:18 | And so my very creative producer
commissioned an artist to draw us our own very
| | 00:23 | custom cartoon character and we are
going to call him Captain Knowledge.
| | 00:27 | We are going to start off with modeling
the simpler parts of Captain Knowledge
| | 00:31 | and then work our way up to the more
complex parts and so we are going to
| | 00:35 | start with his boot.
| | 00:37 | And in top view, let's go
ahead and Add > Mesh > Circle.
| | 00:43 | We only want 8 vertices and the reason
we only want 8 is because the number of
| | 00:49 | vertices that you start off with really
affects the overall resolution of your
| | 00:53 | mesh and the more vertices you have,
the higher resolution, which means the
| | 00:59 | more computing capacity that you need
and so I'm going to construct what's
| | 01:02 | called a low-poly model.
| | 01:04 | So now that we've added this 8
vertices circle, I'm going to scale that down.
| | 01:10 | In this view, I'm going to zoom
in here to fit the outline of the
| | 01:15 | background image.
| | 01:16 | We are going to rotate it and move
it around a little bit so that it's
| | 01:19 | generally lined up.
| | 01:20 | Now it's time to start editing this mesh.
| | 01:23 | So we tab into Edit Mode and we grab
these outside edges here, drag them up,
| | 01:29 | scale them in a little bit.
| | 01:30 | Let's change our center to be a medium
point between the two points, scale them
| | 01:37 | into to match the outline of
the boot and there we have it.
| | 01:45 | So now we have our first edge loop.
| | 01:48 | I'm going to select that edge loop and
we are going to press E to extrude those
| | 01:53 | edges down to about midpoint.
| | 01:55 | You can see there is kind of a flap that bends.
| | 01:57 | So anywhere there is a bend, in any of
the clothing or the character skin or the
| | 02:03 | cloth or the boot, in this case, we
need vertices because that's where Blender
| | 02:07 | can deform the mesh.
| | 02:09 | So now that we've moved this down here.
Click Extrude again, on down to the
| | 02:14 | bottom of this flap.
| | 02:15 | Maybe to scale it out a little bit.
| | 02:17 | Now that's a good time to introduce the
Proportional Editing tool over here or
| | 02:21 | just by pressing O when you are in Edit Mode.
| | 02:24 | It starts the Proportional Editing Mode.
| | 02:26 | In the Proportional Editing Mode, when
you grab just a single vertex, you get
| | 02:30 | this circle here and the circle is a
circle of influence and it means that any
| | 02:34 | vertices that are within that
circle will be affected proportionally.
| | 02:39 | So even though I'm only moving that
one vertex, other vertices are moving
| | 02:43 | proportionally to it.
| | 02:45 | Now the amount these other vertices
move is proportional to the circle size.
| | 02:49 | So if I scroll my mouse wheel down,
I'm closing up that circle and now as I move,
| | 02:54 | only the center vertex is moving.
| | 02:57 | We use this because in organic forms,
there is no such thing as a straight line.
| | 03:03 | Really nothing should ever be a
perfect octagon when you are talking about
| | 03:08 | muscles and skin and faces and arms
and like that. Otherwise the character
| | 03:12 | looks blocky.
| | 03:13 | You always want to be able to move
things a little bit so that everything is
| | 03:18 | off a little bit, because it's the
symmetry and the asymmetry that brings
| | 03:22 | characters to life.
| | 03:23 | Now we are going to select this bottom
edge loop and a way to select the bottom
| | 03:28 | edge loop or any edge loop is to
select two vertices that start the loop and
| | 03:33 | then doing Select > Edge Loop.
| | 03:36 | Now this flap must fold
over the main boot somehow.
| | 03:41 | So we are going to extrude, but we are
not going to move the vertices or move
| | 03:45 | our mouse at all, we are just going
to click again to drop them in place.
| | 03:48 | Now they are dropped right over
the vertices we just extruded from.
| | 03:52 | I'm going to take Proportional
Editing Mode off and scale them inward.
| | 03:56 | You can see I'm creating like a
little lip, pull those up a little bit,
| | 04:00 | hide them from view.
| | 04:02 | And now I can scale this in to reflect
the rest of the shape of the boot, which
| | 04:06 | is about where they are now.
| | 04:07 | So I can extrude, come on down, down to
like this mid-calf of the boot, scale it out,
| | 04:14 | maybe rotate a little bit,
align up with his calf shape to match the
| | 04:19 | outline of the artist as he drew this boot.
| | 04:26 | So now we have a pretty good boot
shape for the main part of the shaft of
| | 04:31 | the boot.
| | 04:32 | Now we need to work on the toe.
| | 04:33 | So let's come over here to front-view.
| | 04:38 | And in front-view add another
circle of 8 vertices and scale that down.
| | 04:46 | Now for this what we want
to do is we want flat soles.
| | 04:50 | So we are going to just take that one
vertex and move it up and the rest of that
| | 04:54 | makes a pretty good profile view
of what a boot would look like.
| | 04:57 | So if we need to make it a little smaller.
| | 04:59 | So now we are going to introduce the
Ctrl+L, which selects linked vertices.
| | 05:06 | So I have selected these vertices,
but these aren't actually physically
| | 05:09 | connected to the rest of these other mesh.
| | 05:11 | So our mesh can contain many
sets of disconnected vertices.
| | 05:17 | Now we are modeling this
boot as if it's straight on.
| | 05:21 | We started with the circle with the
front scene facing directly forward, but the
| | 05:26 | artist has drawn him with his feet
kind of spread apart, so we'll have to fix
| | 05:29 | that a little later on but we want to
model the boot as if it was just sitting
| | 05:32 | there in the boot store.
| | 05:33 | So now let's move this around the
ball of his foot, scale it down,
| | 05:42 | and again rotate it back.
| | 05:48 | Now we need to close up the front of
the boot, position it to make it more like
| | 05:52 | a foot that would fit in that boot.
| | 05:54 | So we are going to select these
vertices as well, and move them over.
| | 05:59 | So now for this edge loop, Ctrl+E, to
select in that ring and now we want
| | 06:05 | to connect these.
| | 06:06 | So what we are going to do is select 1,
2, 3, 4, and press F to make a face out
| | 06:15 | of four vertices and
that's a called a quad face.
| | 06:19 | You should try to use
four vertices to make a face.
| | 06:23 | 1, 2, 3, 4.
| | 06:29 | Now if you happen to select the
vertices behind here and that starts getting in
| | 06:33 | the way for you, go ahead and just
hide those vertices, remember how we hide
| | 06:37 | vertices? We just select them
and press H and the way they go.
| | 06:42 | Alt+H unhides them and now we are
ready to start on the back portion of the boot.
| | 06:48 | So let's zoom in.
| | 06:51 | sometimes just moving a vertex just a
little bit makes a big difference in the
| | 06:55 | realism and the appearance of a character.
| | 06:58 | So now with our 8 vertices selected
are shown up here, you can see that we're
| | 07:02 | already up to 80 vertices.
| | 07:05 | We'll extrude it, so I can press Y and
that constraints my mouse movement only
| | 07:10 | in the Y direction and then extrude one
more time in the Y direction by pressing
| | 07:16 | Y and maybe rotating this a little bit,
scaling it up, grabbing it, moving it up,
| | 07:21 | so the boot is nice and
flat and it kind of aligns up here.
| | 07:24 | Now it's time to start stitching
this boot part to the leg part.
| | 07:29 | And to do that, we are going to
do some more little vertex merging.
| | 07:33 | To merge vertices, we select both
of them and from the Specials menu by
| | 07:38 | pressing W, clicking on Merge, now
there is a couple of different places you
| | 07:42 | can merge them.
| | 07:43 | I must always use the center.
| | 07:45 | Over here on the side we repeat the process.
| | 07:48 | Now here I want the boot to be more
towards the outside, so towards the active
| | 07:53 | vertex, which is the one that I last selected.
| | 07:56 | So now when I do my merge, I'm going to
do it at the last one and that snaps the
| | 08:01 | outside of the boot there.
| | 08:03 | Here, I want to be kind of be in the
center and we just work our way around
| | 08:07 | the boot, stitching it together and
then last but not least, we want to stitch
| | 08:16 | the back ones.
| | 08:21 | And now we want to go ahead and create
those four faces on the back and again if
| | 08:25 | the vertices are distracting you, you
can always switch to Solid view and hide
| | 08:30 | or occlude the background geometry, and
that way those vertices that are upfront
| | 08:34 | wouldn't distract you.
| | 08:35 | And we could just go ahead and create
out four faces, now that we have merged.
| | 08:44 | There we have a pretty good-looking boot.
| | 08:46 | Maybe bring this out.
| | 08:48 | Now we want to make it a little more
round and all I'm doing is just grabbing
| | 08:51 | vertices, moving them around a
little bit so that things aren't so blocky looking
| | 08:56 | and that's how you make a low-poly boot.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying the Mirror modifier to duplicate the boot and rotate| 00:00 | Now when you start modeling, there are
just a couple of things that I want to
| | 00:03 | go over, because they're common mistakes
that beginners can make that can kind of
| | 00:07 | trip you up.
| | 00:08 | First of all, what I have done
is I have changed his boot shape.
| | 00:11 | Initially, when I scaled those toe
vertices down, I scaled them altogether and
| | 00:15 | I didn't constrain that in the X
direction only, and so he became almost like a
| | 00:19 | stiletto shoe or something like that.
| | 00:21 | Not really a boot.
| | 00:22 | So what I ended up doing is scaling
these toes out wider to make more room for
| | 00:28 | a manly foot.
| | 00:29 | Then the other thing that we need to
do is we need to go ahead and apply the
| | 00:33 | Mirror Modifier so that we
have two boots, not just one boot.
| | 00:36 | Now you will notice that the object
center is over here where I started modeling
| | 00:40 | the boot, when I added that first circle.
| | 00:42 | But that's not where we want the
center of the circle to be in order to apply
| | 00:47 | this Mirror Modifier.
| | 00:48 | Let me show you what happens when we do
apply the Mirror Modifier to the boot.
| | 00:53 | Nothing apparently happens.
| | 00:54 | Well, that's because the boot is symmetrical.
| | 00:57 | So what Blender has actually done is if
you notice around in here, it's actually
| | 01:00 | duplicated on both sides of the object center.
| | 01:03 | Mirror is always relative
to the center of the object.
| | 01:07 | Press N to bring up the Properties
panel and what we want to do is bring
| | 01:11 | this object to center.
| | 01:12 | So we are going to click into each of
these fields and enter 0 for the location.
| | 01:17 | The other way to do that is to press
Alt+G with the selected object and then
| | 01:21 | that clears the location of
that object back to origin.
| | 01:25 | So now if we go into Tab Mode, select
all of the vertices by pressing A, now
| | 01:31 | when we move, look what happens.
| | 01:33 | Blender automatically mirrors and
duplicates those two sets of vertices on both
| | 01:39 | sides of this object's center.
| | 01:41 | We move it up a little bit there.
| | 01:44 | Also we can rotate it out in Top
view to match the drawing perspective.
| | 01:49 | So that's a few cleanup moves that you
need to do in order to take your low-poly
| | 01:53 | model and make it match
your reference picture exactly.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modeling a helmet with NURBS and the Boolean modifier| 00:00 | So let's make a helmet for Captain
Knowledge, and we are making helmets
| | 00:04 | in rounded shapes.
| | 00:06 | It's a lot easier sometimes to model
with NURBS Surfaces. Blender supports a
| | 00:10 | whole bunch of different NURBS Surface
primitives that we are going to use and
| | 00:13 | we are going to start with this NURBS Sphere.
| | 00:16 | So we'll position the NURBS Sphere
roughly in right positions, go ahead and
| | 00:20 | start scaling a little bit to
get into the right shape here.
| | 00:23 | I'm working in this view.
| | 00:25 | Here I'll scale in the X direction by
pressing S-X and scaling it down, so that
| | 00:31 | we follow the roundness of his head.
| | 00:33 | We want to make sure this thing is centered.
| | 00:35 | So I'm going to press N and
change the Location X to 0.
| | 00:38 | I guess while we are at it, I might as
well go ahead and type in Helmet here
| | 00:43 | because that's the name of the object.
| | 00:47 | And now when we tab into Edit Mode to
make our final adjustments to the shape,
| | 00:50 | you can see that this isn't a mesh object.
| | 00:53 | This is actually a computed surface and
the shape of that surface is defined by
| | 00:59 | these control points.
| | 01:00 | And if I move the control point,
Blender recalculates what the rest of the
| | 01:05 | surface should look like.
| | 01:09 | So working with a NURBS Surface,
instead of having thousand vertices to play
| | 01:14 | with and get misaligned and all of that,
All I have to do is work with these
| | 01:18 | control points to control
the overall shape of the mesh.
| | 01:22 | I'm going to start and work my way
counter-clockwise around his head.
| | 01:30 | Just dragging these control points
so that the whole mesh deforms to the
| | 01:33 | outline here.
| | 01:35 | So now we have a great head shape here,
and the curve here matches the shape
| | 01:41 | that we want the helmet portion to be.
| | 01:43 | Down here I really don't care.
| | 01:44 | I'm going to be cutting those away.
| | 01:46 | Now I'm ready to cut away
the portion that I don't want.
| | 01:49 | Now in order to cut it away I need to
convert this first to a mesh object.
| | 01:55 | So I press Alt+C to convert it.
| | 01:57 | The other way to convert an object
is to go Object > Convert Object Type.
| | 02:02 | And now if I tabbed into Edit Mode, I
would see that Blender has converted
| | 02:05 | this NURBS Surface into a whole bunch
of vertices and a real mesh that I can
| | 02:10 | do further editing on.
| | 02:11 | Now the way you cut out a section of an
object using another object or another
| | 02:16 | surface is to use the Boolean Modifier.
| | 02:19 | And the Boolean Modifier modifies
one object according to another.
| | 02:24 | So let's go ahead and add that other
object and you can use any kind of object,
| | 02:28 | doesn't really matter.
| | 02:29 | I'm going to go ahead and
use another NURBS Sphere.
| | 02:32 | And what we want to do is position this
sphere so that it cuts away the portion
| | 02:37 | of the helmet that we do not want.
| | 02:43 | So if I worked in Edit Mode here, I can
grab and move this NURBS Sphere forward.
| | 02:50 | As I do, you can see that it would be
cutting more and more of the helmet away,
| | 02:55 | or these two intersect is
what's going to be cut away.
| | 02:58 | All right, so let's tab out of there,
now we select our helmet and we are going
| | 03:03 | to name this object cut.
| | 03:06 | So bringing that up, I'll just
type it cut, keeps it simple.
| | 03:12 | Add the Boolean modifier to your
helmet and type in the name of the cutting
| | 03:17 | object, which is in this case cut.
| | 03:18 | It tells me I have to
make it a mesh, okay, there.
| | 03:25 | The Boolean Modifier has three modes
where it can compute the intersection
| | 03:30 | between two objects and make a mesh of that.
| | 03:33 | It looks like that intersection.
| | 03:35 | Or the union, which is both of them
together or in this case what we want is the
| | 03:40 | difference between the two.
| | 03:43 | So wherever the cutting mesh is, it's
going to cut away portions of the helmet.
| | 03:49 | Now this Boolean Modifier is dynamic,
if I would grab this around and move it,
| | 03:54 | I'm changing the direction
and the location of the cut.
| | 03:57 | And I can show that by hiding my cut,
and as you can see, I now have a cut
| | 04:02 | away portion.
| | 04:03 | If I move the helmet around, I
can change the dynamics of the cut.
| | 04:08 | I'm going to drop that in place.
| | 04:11 | So now if I look at this, I can see
where the cut is actually going to happen on
| | 04:15 | the outside of this sphere.
| | 04:17 | And I like that.
| | 04:19 | I like that very much.
| | 04:20 | So we are going to go ahead and I
think that follows the curve pretty well.
| | 04:24 | So we are going to go
ahead and apply this modifier.
| | 04:27 | And that makes those
changes permanent to this mesh.
| | 04:30 | Now this mesh is permanently cut.
| | 04:33 | Now we don't want all of this part here
that was created and by the modifier, we
| | 04:37 | are going to go ahead and cut that away.
| | 04:39 | So to cut that away, we tab into Edit
Mode and start selecting vertices, I can
| | 04:45 | use bb, select all these
vertices that we don't want.
| | 04:50 | While I'm at it, I can box select the X
to Delete when we think we have gotten
| | 04:56 | all of the right ones selected but not too many.
| | 04:58 | I can now pick off this trace.
| | 05:00 | A lot of times too it's easier to
delete in small groups, make small changes.
| | 05:07 | You can always undo if you find that
you have deleted too many, X to Delete.
| | 05:13 | So now we are ready to make our fine
tune adjustments by grabbing this back
| | 05:18 | vertice here because we
want to stretch this down.
| | 05:21 | So we are going to use O to go into
Proportional Editing Mode and now when I
| | 05:25 | press G, I have my circle of influence.
| | 05:28 | And all of the vertices that are
within that circle are influenced by the
| | 05:32 | move action.
| | 05:33 | So I'm going to grab a couple here,
press G and now it stretches them right
| | 05:38 | into position.
| | 05:40 | I can grab some around in
the back, and grab those down.
| | 05:43 | It's great for editing smooth surfaces
because the Proportional keeps everything
| | 05:48 | proportionally moving.
| | 05:50 | And the results of the edit
are a nice fine smooth mesh.
| | 05:54 | We have got something funny going on
here with the front, so we'll fix that
| | 06:00 | a little bit.
| | 06:02 | Take Proportional Mode off, O
and then G to grab and move.
| | 06:06 | All right, so now when we go back and
we have put in our Mirror Modifier, the
| | 06:16 | last thing I would like to tell you
about is recall that this was oriented on
| | 06:20 | its side, so the Z direction was left and right.
| | 06:23 | So we are going to use the Z-axis now.
| | 06:25 | Notice it hasn't joined it in the
middle, and that's because when I converted
| | 06:30 | it, the longitude line didn't
quite match up at the equator.
| | 06:33 | That's just the way NURBS Objects are converted.
| | 06:37 | Now I could go into Edit Mode and move
this over, but the issue is with a curved
| | 06:42 | surface right here because
it wasn't exactly at center.
| | 06:45 | The tangent is not exactly 90 degrees
and so if I smoosh this together, I would
| | 06:51 | end up with a seam in the
middle that you could see.
| | 06:54 | So what I'm going to do instead is
increase the Merge Limit to 0.1 and now I
| | 06:58 | have told Mirror that any vertice that's
within 0.1 Blender units of center will
| | 07:04 | go ahead and be merged over.
| | 07:05 | And that creates a nice smooth transition.
| | 07:08 | So now we have our nice smooth
helmet using NURBS Surfaces and the
| | 07:13 | Boolean Modifier.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modeling a belt and pants by making a compound object from multiple primitive objects | 00:00 | All right, let's give
captain knowledge some pants.
| | 00:04 | So we're going to start with a circular shape.
| | 00:06 | Now instead of using just 8 vertices,
let's go ahead and use 16, double the
| | 00:12 | amount just to give us a little more resolution.
| | 00:15 | And again how many you use is totally
up to you and the power of your computer.
| | 00:19 | So I added this in top view.
| | 00:21 | I have Render setup that whenever I add
an object, it adds it Aligned to View.
| | 00:29 | So if I add a circle in top view, it's
this way, but then it looks straight on
| | 00:35 | in front view and in side view.
| | 00:36 | So we're going to scale it down
because he has got a pretty narrow waist.
| | 00:40 | Now I can't say here because his arm is
occluded and that's usually why you do a
| | 00:45 | lot of perspective drawings with your
figure in let's call it the T pose, which
| | 00:50 | is with the arms stretched out to the side.
| | 00:53 | So now when we Tab into Edit
Mode, we Extrude these edges down.
| | 00:57 | And we want it to be a stiff thick leather belt.
| | 01:00 | So we don't worry about
putting vertices in the middle here.
| | 01:04 | Now the other thing we can
do is select the Inverse.
| | 01:06 | So we've selected this bottom row.
| | 01:08 | If we want to select this top row,
we can go Select > Inverse, also known as
| | 01:13 | Ctrl+I, and that switches and
flips the vertices that we've selected.
| | 01:19 | We're going to grab these
middle ones and using a very broad
| | 01:23 | Proportional Editing tool.
| | 01:25 | Grab these and drag them up a little
bit, where the belt rides up a little bit,
| | 01:30 | there we go.
| | 01:32 | Then for this belt buckle, we want
to go ahead and add the belt buckle in
| | 01:36 | front view.
| | 01:37 | Notice how my background images are not
perfectly aligned, and so I would have
| | 01:42 | to go in and adjust the background images
just a tiny bit, so that it aligns up
| | 01:47 | perfectly in both views.
| | 01:49 | So you may have to fine tune
down your background image offsets.
| | 01:53 | All right, so now to add the front belt,
I'm going to reposition my 3D cursor
| | 01:57 | out here to the front, and add another circle.
| | 01:59 | And notice now I've added
two circles to the same object.
| | 02:05 | I'm making what's called a
compound object and I have to turn off
| | 02:08 | Proportional Editing.
| | 02:09 | Now when I scale this down in here,
now I have some vertices from the circle
| | 02:14 | going this way and others going the other way.
| | 02:16 | This is an example of using multiple
primitives to make a very complex object.
| | 02:23 | Just checking in Solid view now,
I see that I've forgot to fill in this front face.
| | 02:27 | So I can fill in a number of
vertices by pressing Shift+F and that makes
| | 02:32 | a filled face for me.
| | 02:33 | Now I'm going to Extrude this a little
bit, and scale it out, and Extrude again.
| | 02:43 | But now I'm going to move those back.
| | 02:45 | That will create a little ridge in
that belt buckle. Extrude out again and
| | 02:50 | this time scale.
| | 02:52 | And Extrude again, but move it back.
| | 02:55 | Now he has a nice big fancy belt buckle.
| | 03:00 | Now we can continue this Edge
Loop down here, to make his pants.
| | 03:04 | So now if I select two or more vertices
down here on this bottom row, I should
| | 03:08 | be able to do an Edge Loop Select,
and then scale them in a little bit.
| | 03:12 | I'm going to click S that
scales them in a little bit.
| | 03:16 | That gives that belt some thickness.
| | 03:18 | And now I can Extrude the
vertices down to make his pants,
| | 03:27 | just following his front profile.
| | 03:29 | And now we can take these and use the
Proportional Editing tool to draw them up.
| | 03:36 | Cut out half because we're
going to be mirroring this.
| | 03:39 | And there we have the front of
his tights along with his belt.
| | 03:43 | So we've also seen here how to make a
complex object and a compound object by
| | 03:47 | adding multiple primitives together
to speed up your modeling process.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modeling legs by using edge loops and the Knife tool| 00:00 | So we want Captain Knowledge to be
able to walk around and everything, so we
| | 00:03 | need to give him some legs.
| | 00:05 | First, let's finish up the pants
here by applying the Mirror Modifier.
| | 00:08 | Now when we applied the Mirror
Modifier, we didn't have an edge connecting
| | 00:12 | the front to the back.
| | 00:13 | So they're are actually more of like a
skirt, and we really don't want Captain
| | 00:15 | Knowledge in a skirt.
| | 00:16 | So, what we're going to do is
edit this to give him a crotch.
| | 00:20 | So we just have to select these two in
the front and these two near in the back.
| | 00:28 | And with those 4 vertices selected,
just press F and that makes the face
| | 00:33 | automatically between those two.
| | 00:35 | So now we're going to give him some
legs by extruding this edge loop on down to
| | 00:41 | follow the outline of his leg.
| | 00:43 | Now we don't want any straight lines
when we're modeling an organic object,
| | 00:46 | especially something
that's supposed to be cloth.
| | 00:48 | So, let's go ahead and use the Knife
tool, which is a new tool that we're
| | 00:52 | introducing in this video, by pressing K
. Now, there are a couple of different
| | 00:57 | kinds of ways we can cut a mesh.
| | 01:00 | Let's choose Midpoints in this case,
and now our cursor changes to a little
| | 01:04 | knife, and as you click-and-drag the
knife you get this purple line and all you
| | 01:09 | need to do is just drag it over the
edges that you want to cut and press Enter,
| | 01:13 | then the Knife tool cuts those edges in half.
| | 01:15 | We'll move this one down a little bit,
maybe move this back, round it out
| | 01:19 | a little bit.
| | 01:20 | So there we have it.
| | 01:22 | We'll go into side view here.
| | 01:23 | This looks pretty square.
| | 01:25 | That looks uncomfortable.
| | 01:27 | So, now we have enough
vertices to start his leg.
| | 01:31 | I'll move this back to
make it little more round.
| | 01:34 | And I'm looking here in Top view as well.
| | 01:39 | I've always been looking in Side view
and Top Mode to make sure that we've got a
| | 01:42 | nice round leg to start with.
| | 01:45 | So we'll select these two vertices.
| | 01:47 | Let's start this loop.
| | 01:48 | Then Ctrl+E, Edge Loop Select,
selects all of those vertices in the round.
| | 01:54 | And now that I have my 8 vertices
selected, I can go ahead and Extrude E, notice
| | 01:57 | the edge is down to start his
leg, coming out of his pants.
| | 02:02 | Now, we have a little bit of an issue
here where the drawing is perfectly flat,
| | 02:06 | as if his pants were like really tight.
| | 02:09 | So we're going to have to do a little
few adjustments here that we wouldn't
| | 02:12 | normally otherwise do.
| | 02:15 | Make it match up a little better,
make it a little more round, if it was
| | 02:21 | really being worn.
| | 02:23 | Switching our views back again, now
we need to select the bottom that we
| | 02:27 | just extruded from.
| | 02:30 | What I'm trying to do is follow the
curvature of how the muscles would
| | 02:34 | actually bend and be and this is
something that as I get into this, I'll talk
| | 02:39 | about a little more, because we want
to eventually do a crease where the
| | 02:45 | muscle bulges out from the skin.
| | 02:47 | We want it as best as possible, to
have a nice smooth curve, using these
| | 02:54 | straight line segments.
| | 02:56 | I don't care too much about the
backside, so there is only like two or
| | 02:59 | three vertices, defining the backside
of the leg but the front side of the
| | 03:02 | leg is where I want the detail,
because that's what's going to be seen in
| | 03:04 | the animation.
| | 03:05 | All right, so now we would select to these.
| | 03:09 | Select this Bottom Edge
Loop and Extrude on down.
| | 03:13 | Right above the kneecap where the
patellar tendon comes under the kneecap and
| | 03:17 | joins up to the muscle.
| | 03:19 | There is a distinct definition here,
which the artist is actually showing you in
| | 03:22 | the kneecap and then the edge of the quardricep.
| | 03:26 | In modeling organic form, it always
helps to understand where the skeleton is
| | 03:31 | and where the muscles are and
how it's going to naturally change.
| | 03:34 | Now, Blender can only create and show
you a crease and a mesh, where there are
| | 03:41 | two edges close together.
| | 03:43 | So we have to start moving these close together.
| | 03:46 | These two right here, so you can Shift+
Select them and just S, scaling brings
| | 03:51 | them close together.
| | 03:52 | And now if I'd bring this one just a
little more forward, in front of this one,
| | 03:57 | I've started to get a little bit of crease.
| | 04:01 | This middle crease defines the center
of the muscle, and then this edge shows
| | 04:05 | me the other side.
| | 04:06 | Now, we're going to Extrude
down to just about the kneecap.
| | 04:11 | The next consideration when you're
doing meshes is that you need groups of
| | 04:15 | vertices where the mesh is going to bend.
| | 04:19 | And when we rig this character he is
going to obviously bend at the knee, so we
| | 04:23 | need some vertices here around the knee.
| | 04:25 | That will allow the mesh to bend nicely.
| | 04:28 | And I can see over here, I needed
to move these forward a little bit.
| | 04:33 | All right, now we're going to Extrude
down again, and this time we're going to
| | 04:38 | Extrude down and then rotate counter-
clockwise, and Extrude again, down, rotate,
| | 04:46 | counter-clockwise and scale it in.
| | 04:48 | So it's got ridiculously small knees.
| | 04:51 | Come over here and scale in the X
-direction to match the artist's
| | 04:55 | representation, and then finally
Extrude again down into his boot.
| | 04:59 | Now all we need to do is
bring it down into the boot.
| | 05:02 | The boot will actually cover this up,
okay, I don't need to go all the way down
| | 05:05 | in the model's feet and everything,
because it will never bee seen, we are never
| | 05:07 | going to shown taking his boots off.
| | 05:09 | All right, a little few tweaks here
and since we applied the Mirror Modifier,
| | 05:14 | we've automatically added on his other leg.
| | 05:16 | So, I'm tabbing out of the Object Mode.
| | 05:18 | It looks pretty chunky, but we also
can apply a different Modifier called the
| | 05:23 | SubSurface modifier.
| | 05:26 | The SubSurf goes in between each
vertice and fills the based on the bending of
| | 05:31 | the vertice, where another vertex
would be or where it thinks it should be.
| | 05:37 | The way it thinks it should be is
according to a formula, and the formula was
| | 05:41 | invented by Mr.Catmull and Mr.
| | 05:43 | Clark and they collaborated, I believe
it was out here in California, when they
| | 05:47 | came up with this formula.
| | 05:49 | The other way we can do it is
this Simple Subdivsion, which is a
| | 05:52 | different formula.
| | 05:53 | The Catmull-Clark gives a wonderful
smooth organic shape for Captain Knowledge.
| | 05:59 | All right, so there we have an
example of Modeling and Extruding, where we
| | 06:04 | follow the musculature and put edge
loops where the mesh is going to be bending.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modeling a chest and arms using edge loops| 00:00 | All right, now it's time to work on his chest.
| | 00:04 | Now we can model the chest as a
separate object, just like we did the boots and
| | 00:07 | the pants, or we can just start
with the pants and work our way up.
| | 00:12 | So I guess I'll start with
the pants and work our way up.
| | 00:15 | We'll just take these top two of the
belt, since he is never going to be taking
| | 00:19 | his belt off and Ctrl+E, Edge
Loop Select, selects those around.
| | 00:24 | We can then go back to Side
Mode now. We want to Extrude.
| | 00:27 | Now, when we start extruding this, we
have to have edge loops where the mesh is
| | 00:33 | going to bend, as well as be able to
put in an edge or crease where we want
| | 00:39 | them to crease, and as you can see here,
there is a lot of creases going on.
| | 00:43 | We have, first of all, some ripped abs
that he has and I'm glad the artist used
| | 00:49 | my abs as I modeled here for this
six-pack that he's got going on.
| | 00:55 | And then just right above that we have
these monstrous pectorals going on that--
| | 01:01 | he could probably bench 400.
| | 01:03 | I could take him.
| | 01:05 | So, we have to have creases there as
well as a little bit of a rib action going
| | 01:09 | on back here because he has
probably about 2% body fat.
| | 01:13 | So, this is going to be a little
complicated to model, but let's get to it.
| | 01:19 | So, we are going to Extrude up and we
are going to go up to right about here,
| | 01:23 | and we are going to drop those in place.
We are going to rotate to match where
| | 01:29 | we want the muscles to
have that crisp definition.
| | 01:35 | So we are going to grab
and move some vertices here.
| | 01:44 | So, the muscles go this way at
a slant, as well as a slant this way.
| | 01:49 | We really have to operate
here in three-dimensions.
| | 01:51 | That's one of the difficult things
in three-dimensional modeling,
| | 01:55 | is working in three dimensions with a 2D screen.
| | 01:57 | Okay, now when we select
this Edge Loop, Ctrl+E again.
| | 02:04 | Now we want to Extrude upward, but just
a little bit, and then we want to scale out,
| | 02:09 | and that gives us this nice little
crease where his abdomen meets his rib cage,
| | 02:14 | and now we can Extrude up
to just under his pecs.
| | 02:18 | Eventually, this back has to match up
to here, because that's his back, so this
| | 02:23 | is the small of his back back here.
| | 02:25 | So I'm going to go into Proportional
Editing Mode here, pressing O and then G to
| | 02:30 | move all of these back.
| | 02:34 | Then also looking in top view to
make sure that we have a round guy and
| | 02:38 | I'm going to go ahead and hide these
pants and legs because from his Top view
| | 02:42 | it's a little confusing.
| | 02:44 | So A, B, H, now we are working with
just his chest body and you can see I have
| | 02:50 | kind of an edge here.
| | 02:51 | That's not too good.
| | 02:54 | So we'll round that out, by dragging
these vertexes out and making it more of
| | 02:57 | a circular shape.
| | 03:02 | So, now that we have a nice round
shape here in Top view, we are going to
| | 03:06 | select this Edge Loop.
| | 03:09 | All we have to do is press Ctrl+E and click.
| | 03:12 | Blender remembers the last selection
we made on this pop-up menu and so it
| | 03:16 | automatically positions the cursor and
the menu, so that all I have to do is
| | 03:21 | click to select that menu option again.
| | 03:24 | So again, we are going to Extrude this
up again, just under his cape, and after
| | 03:28 | you Extrude always do a scale or a
rotate or something so that the lines from
| | 03:35 | the edges below are not perfectly
parallel and that way in an organic shape,
| | 03:40 | you don't have any parallel or square lines.
| | 03:43 | Okay, so now we have this right up
here under this logo I guess it is.
| | 03:49 | We'll move this up a little bit. This
is torn away a bit too far, so we'll move
| | 03:53 | that over closer to center,
so that the merge picks it up.
| | 03:56 | We can also select just the center
vertices and scale them in the x-direction,
| | 04:03 | and that lines them all up. That is,
they all scale together in that one axis.
| | 04:08 | Now the armpit deforms quite a bit, so
we are going to add in another edge loop.
| | 04:12 | We are going to scale outward.
| | 04:13 | Sometimes you're tempted
to almost do this randomly.
| | 04:21 | But you're really trying to follow
muscle lines, chest lines, outlines.
| | 04:27 | All right, now it would be a
good time to add on his arm.
| | 04:32 | Voila!
| | 04:33 | I'll straighten this out a little bit,
to give him a little more of a round shape,
| | 04:36 | and come over here, add
in a circle of eight vertices.
| | 04:43 | Now, another way you can work with
these is just to click-and-drag your mouse
| | 04:47 | to the left and that
decrements that numeric control.
| | 04:51 | Yet another way to operate with
the numeric controls within Blender.
| | 04:55 | Once we add that, we are going to scale
this down, and rotate it so that we can
| | 05:00 | use these two vertices as his armpit mesh.
| | 05:04 | I am going to position this
somewhere right around in here.
| | 05:08 | This is where his arm seems to be,
pretty far towards the back of his body,
| | 05:13 | and I'm going to go ahead and model
his arm off-camera now, because it's
| | 05:17 | pretty boring to watch.
| | 05:18 | And I'm not going to do anything
different than the way I modeled his leg.
| | 05:21 | In fact, I'm going to go and just
Extrude down, down here to his elbow, and
| | 05:24 | then down to his wrist.
| | 05:26 | See you in a bit and we'll pick
up with the next exercise file.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Stitching the shoulders and neck| 00:00 | So now that we've finished our
arm and you can see my arm here.
| | 00:03 | It's a very blocky kind of arm,
because he is a cartoon character.
| | 00:07 | But I just used the drawing as a guide
to creating the elbow, and you see I have
| | 00:11 | my three edge loops here down by my
elbow and then it goes down to his wrist.
| | 00:16 | So let's go ahead now and stitch this
arm on to the main torso to provide that
| | 00:22 | whole shoulder area.
| | 00:23 | So what we want to do is we want to
just take and stitch this arm right here to
| | 00:28 | this vertex, by Shift+Selecting both of them.
| | 00:31 | So, you press W to bring up the
Specials menu and you want to click Merge.
| | 00:36 | Now you have a couple of Merge options,
so we just merge them at the center.
| | 00:40 | Then to stitch these two together,
we do the same, Shift-click+W, Merge
| | 00:46 | > At the center.
| | 00:47 | Now, this arm is physically
connected to this mesh and we can select the
| | 00:52 | whole edge loop again, Ctrl+E to get
our edge loops, and we have 1, 2, 3, 4,
| | 00:57 | 5, 6, 7, and 8.
| | 01:01 | We have 15 vertices in our edge loop
and that's little important later on when
| | 01:06 | we get up to stitching the top shoulders.
| | 01:09 | So, going back into Side view, we are
going to Extrude these up to the top where
| | 01:15 | his shoulder line is, which is right
around in there, and then do a bunch of
| | 01:19 | fine adjustments to make our
mesh match the artist's rendering.
| | 01:24 | So the chest comes back.
He's got a very slanted chest.
| | 01:29 | Wonder how he breathes.
| | 01:30 | Maybe he breathes something far in.
| | 01:33 | Now, where this armpit is connected,
we are going to bring that forward and
| | 01:40 | bring the back one back, because
that's the way the body deforms.
| | 01:45 | Over here, we want to match up now this
back line with the back drawing line
| | 01:58 | and it swoops nicely around to the front.
| | 02:00 | It looks like it ends under his clasp.
| | 02:02 | Now, we have to make a neck
for his head to come up through.
| | 02:07 | So, we'll click in the top view here,
and add a circle of about 8 vertices,
| | 02:12 | scale it down to match in
Front view the width of his neck.
| | 02:17 | I'm going to tilt it to match his
neckline here, and Extrude it up, and scale it in,
| | 02:27 | and then tweak all the individual
vertices, so they all line up.
| | 02:31 | Again, we only need half of them.
| | 02:34 | Now, in the neck there is a
couple of vertices that we want to do.
| | 02:41 | We want to crease that
comes along the front like this.
| | 02:44 | This is a major tendon that connects the
head to the chest and then in the back
| | 02:49 | there is another one.
| | 02:50 | So, if we have an edge there we can
always then double up and use a Knife tool
| | 02:54 | to cut, create a few more
vertices that will give us a better definition
| | 02:57 | if we care to.
| | 02:58 | Since this is a cartoon character,
it doesn't really need to be photo realistic.
| | 03:02 | All right, so now we have to stitch
the neck to the shoulder area and we are
| | 03:07 | going to start out just by selecting
these first two and pressing F to make an
| | 03:13 | edge and we want to see if that's the
actual edge that we want and if we come
| | 03:17 | back in here into Side view,
we see that it isn't.
| | 03:20 | So we're going readjust
those vertices, there we go.
| | 03:27 | All right, now the wonderful world of stitching.
| | 03:30 | You get really good at counting to four.
So we have 1, 2, 3, 4 vertices, press F
| | 03:35 | and that makes a Face.
| | 03:36 | All right, so now I have only five
vertices here that define the neck area,
| | 03:43 | but I have 15 vertices that
define the whole shoulder area.
| | 03:48 | So, at some point I need to connect one
of these to many of these, and the way
| | 03:52 | you do that is when you get to
a point like right about here,
| | 04:03 | and press F and if Blender can make a face for
you it will. Otherwise it has to make what it's
| | 04:08 | called a convex face.
| | 04:10 | And it can't do that.
| | 04:11 | So you just have to deform this a
little bit to make sort of like, I want to
| | 04:17 | say a Knights of Columbus, kind of
pendulum diamond-shape, and now I can take
| | 04:22 | this and go 1, 2, 3.
| | 04:28 | Auto-clicking.
| | 04:30 | Now, I'm getting around to the point
where I don't need to go and span the three.
| | 04:34 | I can go ahead and make a Quad Face.
So we want to select 3, one here and
| | 04:42 | then three from this side.
Press F to make a Face there.
| | 04:47 | I keep picking these backgrounds.
| | 04:50 | So I like I have been telling you,
you can turn on the Occlude and that way
| | 04:54 | you can't accidentally select them,
and we finish up with a quad.
| | 05:02 | So, that is the wonderful and
exciting world of stitching.
| | 05:05 | It's a whole bunch of meticulous work,
but now we've stitched the arm to the
| | 05:10 | shoulder and the neck and
that completes the torso.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modeling hands with the Proportional Editing tool| 00:00 | Captain Knowledge is
starting to shape up pretty well.
| | 00:04 | We have his torso here, we have his boots,
as a separate object, and we have his
| | 00:09 | helmet as a separate object.
| | 00:11 | So what we're going to do now is
finish off his body with the hands and the head.
| | 00:15 | Go ahead and model his hands as a
separate object, because hands are really hard
| | 00:19 | to do. You can just ask
Michelangelo, if he's still around.
| | 00:22 | So we're going to model as a separate
object, but we want it to join up with the wrist.
| | 00:26 | So we're going to do an Edge
Loop Select and Shift+D to duplicate
| | 00:31 | these vertices.
| | 00:32 | We're just going to drop them in place.
| | 00:34 | What we've done is we've made a copy of
those vertices and there is actually two
| | 00:38 | vertices in exactly the same place.
| | 00:40 | I can actually just move them a little bit.
| | 00:41 | See there, these vertices.
| | 00:43 | What we want to do is separate them
from the main mesh by pressing P and we can
| | 00:49 | separate by the selected ones or by
material if there are different colors or by
| | 00:54 | loose parts, but we're
going to do the selected ones.
| | 00:56 | They have kind of disappeared.
| | 00:58 | Where did they go?
| | 00:59 | Well, they became their own object.
| | 01:01 | So if we Tab out of here and hide, now
we see that we have this wrist ring that
| | 01:07 | we can use as the starting basis for our hand.
| | 01:10 | Now hands are comprised of your palm,
the back of your hand, the thumb,
| | 01:15 | and forefingers.
| | 01:16 | Some cartoon characters only use two
fingers, some use three, he's drawn four,
| | 01:21 | so I'll go ahead and draw four.
| | 01:24 | What I'll actually do is I'll draw the
thumb, show you how to extrude the thumb
| | 01:29 | and skin it, and then you can repeat
for the other four fingers, and get you
| | 01:33 | started and we can go.
| | 01:34 | Now he hasn't drawn the fingers out, but
the finger length of the pointer finger
| | 01:39 | is the same length as your palm,
as a proportional kind of a thing.
| | 01:42 | So we can kind of use this distance
here a guide for how long the fingers
| | 01:45 | should be.
| | 01:46 | It looks like the fingers should
end up somewhere down around in here.
| | 01:48 | So we'll Tab in and start extruding.
| | 01:51 | First major group is right here where
the thumb starts to separate from the
| | 01:56 | palm of the hand.
| | 01:57 | So we'll scale that out and working
in the Side view here, scale in the X
| | 02:03 | direction, scale it in,
because it's not quite that wide.
| | 02:10 | Since I did extrude, I do want to
randomize some of these vertices.
| | 02:17 | As I move them, you may want
to turn Proportional Editing on.
| | 02:21 | I don't know if I've discussed
Proportional Editing in detail, but let's take a
| | 02:25 | moment now and talk about this little
O that's down here in your Header bar.
| | 02:29 | Right now Proportional Editing is turned off.
| | 02:32 | So you can turn it on by pressing O or
turn it off by pressing Alt+O. It cycles
| | 02:38 | through three modes.
| | 02:39 | There's three modes:
| | 02:40 | Off, On and Connected.
| | 02:41 | The On mode just says okay any vertices
within anywhere here are just going to
| | 02:46 | moved proportional to however
much I'm moving my selected vertices.
| | 02:52 | So right now if I press G, what
comes up instead of just the vertices
| | 02:57 | being moved is a circle.
| | 02:59 | That's the circle of influence.
| | 03:00 | I can change the circle of influence by
scrolling my mouse wheel down, to focus
| | 03:04 | in more on a specific area, or scroll
it out, to be more of a broader area.
| | 03:11 | You can see as I'm moving this one
vertex, all the others around it are
| | 03:16 | also moving as well.
| | 03:18 | The amount that those are moved is
determined by the Falloff curve, which is
| | 03:22 | right next to the On/Off selector.
| | 03:24 | There are different kinds of curves
that are used for determining how much
| | 03:29 | nearby vertices are moved
relative to the vertex you've selected.
| | 03:34 | So if I, for example, choose Short
Falloff, that means that when I move this
| | 03:39 | vertex, it moves a lot, but the other
vertices next to it don't move very much.
| | 03:44 | If I use a Round or a Spherical Falloff,
then when I move this one vertex, the
| | 03:50 | others move quite a bit more as you can see.
| | 03:53 | So even though they're all on the same
circle, how much they are all distorted
| | 03:57 | or moved determines on your Falloff.
| | 04:00 | Generally, I like the Smooth Falloff,
because that's a hyperbolic curve, which
| | 04:03 | is what balloons and latex and
other stretchy things stretch by.
| | 04:08 | That's the same algorithm there.
| | 04:10 | So I'm going to move this up little bit.
| | 04:13 | The reason you want to use
Proportional Editing and the reason I call it up
| | 04:16 | again is because when you're editing
organic meshes and stretching the surfaces
| | 04:20 | and stretching the skins, you want to
move all of the vertices together, so that
| | 04:24 | they all form a curve.
| | 04:25 | There's never any straight lines in your mesh.
| | 04:27 | So I'm going to go ahead and
press Ctrl, and then Click.
| | 04:31 | When I do that, I'm kind of
automatically extruding vertices from the
| | 04:35 | selected vertex.
| | 04:37 | Now if I go ahead and erase the edge
that's connecting those vertices to this
| | 04:42 | other one, now I have a disconnected mesh,
just like we have at the belt buckle.
| | 04:45 | So now I have this portion of mesh and
if I press Ctrl+L to select the linked
| | 04:50 | vertices, you would see that
I have these vertices here.
| | 04:54 | Notice that even though I have
Proportional Editing Mode on and some of these
| | 04:59 | vertices are within the
circle, they're not moving.
| | 05:02 | That's because I've selected Connected.
| | 05:05 | Only the vertices that are connected
to the selected vertices are moved and
| | 05:09 | that's Proportional Editing Mode.
| | 05:11 | If I turn it just on, on, then
anything around it is moved, whether
| | 05:16 | they're connected or not.
| | 05:18 | Now we have the basic back of the hand
and then the palm on the other side, down
| | 05:21 | to where the thumb starts to disconnect.
| | 05:23 | So I'm going to position my 3D cursor
right over the center of the thumb where
| | 05:28 | it starts and in Top view, go
ahead and add another circle.
| | 05:32 | Now the number of vertices you use
depends on how fine of a resolution you
| | 05:36 | want to use.
| | 05:37 | I'm going to go ahead and just use 8
and that creates a disconnected circle.
| | 05:41 | Aha, you say, now I know why he was
talking about that disconnected stuff.
| | 05:45 | So I want to work only on the thumb and
as I'm moving stuff around I don't want
| | 05:48 | to affect the rest of the hand, so
I'm going to choose Connected as my
| | 05:53 | Proportional Editing Mode.
| | 05:54 | So we're going to rotate now and scale down.
| | 05:57 | We're just going to make the thumb
and then we're going to all stitch it
| | 06:00 | together, just we like stitch
the arm and the shoulder together.
| | 06:03 | Its okay, you can zoom right in here.
| | 06:05 | All right, now we have the knuckle,
which will be connected and stitched in
| | 06:08 | here, so we have a few
vertices to use for stretching.
| | 06:12 | So I'm going to go ahead and extrude
this down to the thumb joint, scale it down
| | 06:17 | a little bit, and turn Proportional
off, actually right now while I'm doing
| | 06:20 | this, so you don't want to affect the
other joint that I just did, extrude,
| | 06:25 | move, rotate, scale,
extrude, move, rotate, scale.
| | 06:34 | Now we want to get to the end of the
thumb where we want to actually stitch the
| | 06:37 | thumb together, and thumbs come to a
wrapped paper, so we want to do our own
| | 06:43 | bevel on the end of the thumb.
| | 06:46 | The way we do that is we do
three extrudes and scales.
| | 06:55 | Now if you look at the end of this,
we have the end of a fingertip.
| | 06:58 | What I like to do is I want to take the
inside of the thumb, the opposite side
| | 07:02 | from where the thumbnail would be.
| | 07:04 | So I'm going to flatten this down, this
would be where the thumbnail would be,
| | 07:07 | just as a little visual cue.
| | 07:08 | So I'm going to take the opposite end
and then take the three that are above it,
| | 07:13 | and use them to make a face F, and
then the four on the other side, I'm just
| | 07:18 | going to zoom really in close here.
| | 07:21 | Now we have four on each side to make
the other side and now we have skinned the
| | 07:26 | end of the thumb and made an enclosed
mesh, Ctrl+L.I have a Loop Cut option.
| | 07:32 | When I choose Loop Cut, the Loop Cut as
I move my mouse and I hope you can see
| | 07:37 | in purple here is trying to guess
which loop I want to cut, just like I can
| | 07:42 | select loop edges and loop rings.
| | 07:44 | It actually shows me here
with a purple background.
| | 07:45 | Hey!
| | 07:46 | I'm going to cut this way.
| | 07:48 | I'm going to cut laterally.
| | 07:50 | So when I click, it now changes to a
green line and allows me to move where
| | 07:56 | along this loop I do the cut.
| | 07:59 | So for a thumbnail, it
would be right about there.
| | 08:02 | So now I have a set of vertices that
I can use for creating and adding a
| | 08:08 | thumbnail onto the object if I
wanted to, and then I could connect it to
| | 08:11 | the thumb.
| | 08:12 | Now a thumb is actually kind of
fairly oblong, I've drawn this some kind
| | 08:16 | of circular.
| | 08:17 | So what I can do is select them and
scale them out in the X direction, there.
| | 08:24 | That's how you make a thumb or a finger.
| | 08:26 | Come down to the joint knuckle, make
your vertices, make your loops, and
| | 08:30 | then skin the edge.
| | 08:31 | So I'm going to go away now and let
you complete the rest of the fingers.
| | 08:35 | Here's a tip for the fingertips.
| | 08:37 | You can just duplicate the mesh just
like I showed you with the Shift+D and
| | 08:42 | rotate and scale the individual
fingers and do that four times to create
| | 08:46 | your own fingers.
| | 08:47 | Or you can just model each individual
finger individually if you really want to.
| | 08:51 | But I'm probably going to just
duplicate this mesh four times and use those
| | 08:56 | as the fingers.
| | 08:57 | So along we go ahead and do that
and then we'll come back and finish up
| | 08:59 | with stitching the back of the hand
and the palm together to create the
| | 09:02 | completed hand model.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Linking vertices to create knuckle joints| 00:00 | So now we have our fingers, so let's go
ahead and stitch them together and then
| | 00:04 | create the back of a hand.
| | 00:05 | So the stitching as you know now, you
just select the two vertices from each
| | 00:10 | one and I'm going to go ahead and turn
off my widget here because it's kind of
| | 00:13 | getting in the way.
| | 00:14 | So, we take 1, 2, 3, 4 and make an
F for face and then take the finger
| | 00:19 | right next to it.
| | 00:20 | F again, and now we'll go to the Pointer.
| | 00:23 | Now I can't make a face because
those are actually overlapping.
| | 00:26 | So, I'm going to have to
take these off a little bit.
| | 00:30 | I could also merge these as
well if you wanted to merge them.
| | 00:33 | I just like to think of the webbing
that's between the fingers as being
| | 00:36 | a separate face.
| | 00:37 | All right, now we need to start
creating the mesh for the thumb to the finger,
| | 00:45 | to the pointer, and
connect the thumb to the rest.
| | 00:50 | Just choosing these outsides, this is
also just going to give us a frame of
| | 00:54 | reference and then we're
going to connect the pinky.
| | 00:56 | Now, we have the same kind of
exercise that we have to go through with the
| | 01:02 | shoulders and linking one to many vertices.
| | 01:05 | We're going to do that a little bit
but it would be way too much to do across
| | 01:09 | and we'd end up probably some streaking.
| | 01:11 | What I'd like to do is create some
knuckle joints and there is four knuckles
| | 01:17 | across the front, as you
know now for every point.
| | 01:20 | And I'm going to go ahead and position
my 3D cursor right here in the Side view
| | 01:24 | here so I know what distance it is.
| | 01:26 | What I'd like to do is go ahead and
pick my first finger and then hit Ctrl
| | 01:31 | and click.
| | 01:32 | That extrudes that edge.
| | 01:34 | This would be to my pointer knuckle,
then click again to be in between the
| | 01:39 | knuckles and now my middle finger
knuckle and between my ring finger knuckle and
| | 01:45 | between my pinky finger in-between.
| | 01:47 | And now I can connect
these two to make the edge.
| | 01:52 | Can you see how that's coming up?
| | 01:53 | Then I just need to stitch all of
these together into a completed mesh, like
| | 01:59 | I'll do this one right here 1, 2,
3, 4 and then I can do this face.
| | 02:06 | I can see my hand
getting done on the other side.
| | 02:08 | That builds up the knuckles.
| | 02:12 | Now, we can connect the knuckle and
I'll just do the pinky knuckle here, 1, 2,
| | 02:16 | 3, 4 and eventually we'll skin
this all up to fill in that area.
| | 02:23 | Then this area is the broad area of
the back of a hand, catching up here.
| | 02:29 | Lots of clicking, make sure you get a
really good mouse, because you're going to
| | 02:32 | be doing a lot of clicking when you model.
| | 02:34 | So now we have a point where we've
connected everything with four edges and
| | 02:44 | worked down to that triangle.
| | 02:45 | Now, you could just ignore that if
you wanted to, or the way to solve this
| | 02:50 | and make a triangle into a quad is
to delete this edge right here and add
| | 02:57 | another vertex.
| | 02:59 | We'll position this vertex here,
getting in a little closer.
| | 03:02 | 1, 2, 3, 4 and 1, 2, 3, 4.
| | 03:08 | It's still a little out there, we'll
move that back into position and then we
| | 03:17 | have the back of a hand with the
knuckles, so everything will deform nicely.
| | 03:21 | Now we're just going to repeat the
process for the palm of the hand.
| | 03:24 | What you can do is when you need to add
another vertex, put it someplace where
| | 03:28 | there is a big muscle like right by the
thumb here and so you can pop that thumb
| | 03:32 | out a little bit and give the
hand a little meatier flavor.
| | 03:35 | Also notice that I haven't
modeled everything straight.
| | 03:38 | This is semi-realistic.
| | 03:40 | If I was doing a simple toon character,
then probably I could get away with
| | 03:43 | less, but this is a low-poly model where
you might want to show him grabbing the
| | 03:48 | Warhammer, something like that, the great ruler.
| | 03:51 | So we have enough vertices now where
we can put in some bones and do some
| | 03:55 | great hand stretching.
| | 03:57 | So that wraps up making a great low-
poly hand model by making one finger and
| | 04:00 | then duplicating it to save some time
and then stitching it altogether to make a
| | 04:04 | complete unified mesh.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Reinforcing modeling basics to create the face, eyes, nose, and ears| 00:00 | So now it's time to give
captain knowledge a face.
| | 00:03 | So we are going to click here and you
can start with any major facial feature
| | 00:06 | either the eye or the mouth.
| | 00:08 | Let's start with the eye.
| | 00:10 | If we can get the eye right,
the rest of the face is easy.
| | 00:13 | First of all, set expectations just
like your hand, your first face is going
| | 00:17 | to look like an alien.
| | 00:18 | That's why we have kind of
picked an alien looking face here.
| | 00:21 | And eventually you will get better
and better at it, at following the
| | 00:24 | face topology.
| | 00:26 | Getting a good face is all
about getting a good topology.
| | 00:30 | Topology as these lines right here,
the lines of the face and how the face flows.
| | 00:35 | If you are not an artist, tag along and
you will hopefully get the hang of it.
| | 00:40 | To start with the eye, I like to start
with a circle, have about 8 vertices.
| | 00:47 | The other secret to getting a good face
is to start small, start with a very few
| | 00:54 | vertices, start with a
blockhead and then work your way up.
| | 00:57 | A lot of people like they try to start
with this really high res face and
| | 01:02 | it just doesn't work because there is just
too many vertices to mess around with.
| | 01:07 | So here we have our first circle
and I like to position it just like we
| | 01:12 | would our iris.
| | 01:13 | Then we can extrude this forward until
it meets about to the middle of the eye.
| | 01:20 | Now, we can begin with the eye shape.
| | 01:22 | What we are actually making is the eye socket.
| | 01:25 | I'm going to go ahead and scale these
out a little bit, so they are easier
| | 01:28 | to select.
| | 01:29 | You can just start grabbing one,
and following the outline.
| | 01:33 | Now, you know why I scaled it out,
so that it would be easy to grab.
| | 01:37 | I'm looking over here and making sure
that I'm grabbing the ones in the front,
| | 01:46 | and actually if I'm getting confused,
I can just Border Select and hide those.
| | 01:51 | So now I can't even select them.
| | 01:55 | Now that I have the basic eye shape,
notice there is more vertices around a
| | 01:58 | smooth curve than there
are around a straighter edge.
| | 02:01 | I can select all of these and
now I need to arrange them.
| | 02:05 | They are arranged in this view, the
front view, but now they need to be
| | 02:08 | arranged in the side view.
| | 02:09 | So now I just go around and I
trust my drawing. I trust my artist.
| | 02:14 | He is a really good artist and
I know that he has worked out all
| | 02:17 | these perspectives.
| | 02:18 | Now, my background images are probably
not going to be perfect and anytime you
| | 02:22 | draw the same face twice, he is not
going to be able to line it up perfectly.
| | 02:25 | But we take this front face because
this area, the corner of the eye here
| | 02:30 | corresponds to the corner of the
eye here, and this corner of the eye
| | 02:35 | corresponds to all the way back here.
| | 02:38 | So what we are doing is we are taking
this 2D, and we are stretching it in
| | 02:42 | 3D space here.
| | 02:45 | If you select a vertex and you only
drag on the Green Arrow in this view,
| | 02:51 | it doesn't change the
location in this view over here.
| | 02:56 | So all I have to do is pull these
vertices back to match the orientation here.
| | 03:09 | Now, I have a great 3D eye socket.
| | 03:13 | Select all, Extrude, drop by clicking
and then S to scale them out, and now
| | 03:20 | we do it again.
| | 03:21 | Well, this time we've
followed the outside of this outline.
| | 03:24 | So we just grab and drop, right-
click, select, grab, G and drop.
| | 03:35 | Then over here, we work in this view.
| | 03:39 | Likewise in this view if I drag it
this way, I don't affect the location in
| | 03:44 | the other view.
| | 03:46 | I can't capture quite all of the
detail of this curve because I just
| | 03:49 | don't simply have enough.
| | 03:51 | So now we can select this Edge
Loop again, Ctrl+E, Edge Loop Select,
| | 03:56 | Extrude, Drop, Scale.
| | 03:59 | Now, though we have the outside of the
eye socket, the next line that we are
| | 04:03 | going to follow is the eyebrow line,
and that's going to be up here which
| | 04:08 | conveniently is also the helmet line.
| | 04:15 | Now, remember what I said about no
straight or parallel lines when you are
| | 04:18 | modeling any kind of organic form.
| | 04:22 | Always make sure that
there is a line forming here.
| | 04:25 | There is a line here. See
that's almost too straight there?
| | 04:28 | There we go.
That's a little better.
| | 04:33 | Also, in this view, make sure there is
always a curve and continue on like this
| | 04:41 | until we end up with this shape.
| | 04:44 | And that's it.
| | 04:45 | We are done with the eye and
ready to move onto the mouth.
| | 04:47 | So now when we do the mouth,
we are just going to take six vertices.
| | 04:51 | We'll start with the lower lip and Ctrl-
click once, two, three, four, five, six,
| | 05:03 | and I don't want that edge there
connecting the lower lip to the eye.
| | 05:06 | That will look kind of weird.
| | 05:10 | So now I have these six that I'm
going to use to start to define the lip.
| | 05:14 | I have defined it in this view.
| | 05:15 | Now, I come over here and
start to align them in 3D space.
| | 05:20 | So we are going to bring those up to the front.
| | 05:22 | You can see that his lower
lip juts out a little more.
| | 05:24 | Then the next one is about the same
distance backwards or forwards or whatever
| | 05:31 | you want to call it.
| | 05:32 | But then this one is way back here.
| | 05:33 | So this is the lip line here
and the lip line over here.
| | 05:42 | All right. A little bit of adjusting there
to follow the lines as best we can with the
| | 05:48 | number of vertices that we have. Really
this one should go down a little more.
| | 05:51 | Okay, now we are going to take this
lower lip, these three and just extrude
| | 05:57 | downward and move it forward.
| | 06:05 | Notice these little gray lines here.
| | 06:07 | So I'm just going to follow those, 1,
2, 3 and go ahead and extrude down,
| | 06:13 | over back here.
| | 06:20 | Now that I have done 3, I
have to do a little adjustment.
| | 06:25 | I don't know what the vertex is.
| | 06:27 | That one got in the way.
| | 06:31 | Good deal. It's starting to look pretty good.
| | 06:33 | All ready, and then 3 more.
| | 06:42 | Notice I'm starting to run into this
face line here and one more time
| | 06:51 | down to the bottom.
| | 06:52 | So now, we are starting to
run into the edge of the chin.
| | 06:57 | So what to do?
| | 06:58 | Well, we want to trust our lines.
Just like when you are flying, you got to
| | 07:02 | trust your instruments sometimes.
| | 07:05 | This line represents the front on view,
not necessarily where the face starts to
| | 07:11 | actually start to curve back.
| | 07:14 | There is a line right here where the
face actually starts to curve around and
| | 07:18 | then this is the outside edge.
| | 07:20 | So right about here is right about here.
| | 07:23 | So this is where we want to
start to tuck the face backwards.
| | 07:26 | Now, when you make a cube, you start
with a plane and then what you have to do
| | 07:31 | is take two of the edges and extrude them.
| | 07:34 | But now notice I'm over here in this
view, grab them back, take one of these
| | 07:40 | edges, extrude just the vertex, and then
with that vertex selected, select 1, 2,
| | 07:48 | and 3 more to make the edge of the box.
| | 07:51 | So now, I have started to make a little box.
| | 07:56 | Now, I can take this box and extrude it
back to make the underside of the chin.
| | 08:13 | His chin goes dramatically up.
| | 08:14 | We definitely have a Jay
Leno chin action going on here.
| | 08:18 | But now this one defines the outside edge.
| | 08:20 | That's the lowest point that we are
going to be able to see in our character.
| | 08:25 | The rest of this is up underneath.
| | 08:27 | When you are underneath the chin comes
down a little bit and we can stitch too
| | 08:32 | if we get off and extrude downwards and
then make these four faces, 1, 2, 3, 4.
| | 08:40 | Now, the front of the face, the topology,
kind of goes like this because you have
| | 08:46 | the whole chin action going on.
| | 08:48 | So your chin kind of looks like that.
| | 08:51 | That's your chin line.
| | 08:54 | The cheek line goes the other way
and it starts to go like that.
| | 09:02 | That's the topology of the human face.
| | 09:05 | That's the way we can start to
get the chin action going on.
| | 09:10 | At the same time get that tuck
that happens right under the lips.
| | 09:18 | So now we can just start with the top
lip and select these four vertices here
| | 09:23 | and extrude them upwards.
| | 09:26 | Now, underneath the nose, it's pretty
flat, except there is a hard edge there
| | 09:31 | that allows us to pull our lips up.
| | 09:34 | So there needs to be a little bit of
an edge there, so you can bump that.
| | 09:36 | I'm going to go ahead and do 2 there
and now we have the same kind of a box
| | 09:42 | problem where we need to
make a box for the nose.
| | 09:44 | He has got a very boxy nose.
| | 09:46 | So if we just take these three and
extrude them in this direction, we now can
| | 09:52 | take them to face just those two in the
front if you will, move them up a little bit
| | 09:57 | and extrude upwards to
make the bridge of his nose.
| | 10:02 | Now, we have created a right
angle, if you can see that.
| | 10:07 | So what we need to do is make our box.
| | 10:11 | So we'll extrude upwards with just that
just vertex and then connect these four
| | 10:16 | vertices to make the side of the box.
| | 10:18 | Now, the face line, you have your nostril.
| | 10:23 | But for now, we are good to go.
| | 10:24 | The nose actually gets wider towards
the nib of your nose, and then it gets
| | 10:29 | shallower and then it gets wider again
and it's pretty complicated, a little
| | 10:33 | air passage there.
| | 10:34 | But we are going to go
ahead and extrude this upwards.
| | 10:40 | In the front here as you
can see it's getting wider.
| | 10:42 | So we are going to do that.
| | 10:43 | So we get a little bulb of a nose and
then it gets a little narrower and then
| | 10:50 | up towards the bridge of the nose.
| | 10:51 | Shift+Select both of those and
grab and it gets wider up here.
| | 10:59 | Now, we can see it looks good
over here, but looks terrible here.
| | 11:02 | There we go, and we keep filling in
and extruding until you get something
| | 11:09 | that looks like this.
| | 11:11 | Now, there is a couple of things going on here.
| | 11:15 | Notice the cheek line and how I followed
the mandible up just by extruding those
| | 11:21 | few faces to make it empty shell like that.
| | 11:26 | Then when we merge in the eye and we go
stitch the eye to the cheek, we have our
| | 11:31 | completed mesh after we
apply our Mirror Modifier.
| | 11:34 | That's how you do a face.
| | 11:35 | We can go ahead and render this
using our cameras and our lights.
| | 11:40 | We'll activate those layers,
and we have our low-poly face.
| | 11:45 | Once we apply our Subsurf Modifier and
now when we do the render, we have a nice
| | 11:52 | little mask of Captain Knowledge.
| | 11:54 | Let's go over to the Subsurf
Modifier while we are at it.
| | 11:57 | There is a couple of different
levels that you can set based on the power
| | 12:02 | of your computer.
| | 12:04 | In 3D View, you set the number of
levels here and adding more and more levels
| | 12:10 | adds more and more detailed fine mesh.
| | 12:13 | However, I kind of find that gets to
be really dense and really confusing.
| | 12:17 | Crank that down a little bit, but then
when you render, you can crank up the
| | 12:21 | resolution and have a finer and finer mesh.
| | 12:25 | If I rendered with this Level 1
pressing F12, pretty blocky.
| | 12:31 | Cranking it up to Level 2 is better,
but I can still see some of the gradients.
| | 12:35 | Level 3 is pretty darn good.
| | 12:39 | So Level 4 is great.
| | 12:41 | Optimal Draw just simplifies the 3D
View and only shows you the basic edge
| | 12:46 | loops and you want to use that if you
are working still in Edit Mode, or if you
| | 12:51 | have a lower powered computer.
| | 12:54 | The Subsurf should be applied after
the Mirror, so that the basic mesh is
| | 12:58 | mirrored, and then the
entire mesh is sub-surfed.
| | 13:01 | Last, but not least,
we've got to add on the ears.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Appending and linking assets| 00:00 | So let's go over appending
and linking assets in Blender.
| | 00:03 | What we have is the torso for Captain
Knowledge and what we want to do is append
| | 00:08 | in the head that we have modeled.
| | 00:09 | So to append or link in different
assets we come to File > Append or Link and
| | 00:14 | one of our windows changes to a file
browser, but a special kind of browser
| | 00:18 | called an Asset Browser.
| | 00:20 | All we need to do is navigate to the
file that contains the asset that we want
| | 00:24 | to bring in and in this case, when I
finished modeling the head I saved my
| | 00:28 | results in a head-complete.blend file.
| | 00:31 | And when I click on the Blend file
instead of opening it or whatever that we
| | 00:34 | would normally do, we are actually
diving into this file to look at the
| | 00:38 | different objects that are in there.
| | 00:40 | In this case, I want to pick up the
object that was the Head and the Helmet.
| | 00:45 | So all I have to do is right-click on
those elements that I want to bring in.
| | 00:49 | Once I have selected them, there is a
few options down here that I want to go over.
| | 00:53 | One of which is do I want to Append or
Clone a copy of this object to bring into
| | 01:00 | my file or do I merely want to
establish a link to the file?
| | 01:04 | In that way if another artist is
working in this head-complete file and doing
| | 01:09 | some more modeling and maybe doing some
more tweaking on the head and they are
| | 01:12 | not quite done with it, I can just link
to that and then when they update that
| | 01:16 | file, the next time I open up my
file, I'll get the current copy.
| | 01:20 | In this case, I know that I'm done
modeling the head, the earmuffs and
| | 01:23 | the helmet.
| | 01:24 | So, I'm just going to go
ahead and append a copy.
| | 01:27 | The other options are to automatically
select the object to bring it in on the
| | 01:32 | active layer which I almost always
do and to bring it in at the cursor
| | 01:36 | wherever my 3D cursor is, as you can
see over here in this window or to bring
| | 01:40 | it in its original location.
| | 01:42 | I am going to go ahead and click At
Cursor and then left-click Load Library and
| | 01:47 | that brings in those three elements,
the head mesh, the helmet mesh and then
| | 01:52 | the earmuff mesh.
| | 01:54 | So, let's go ahead and join these three
meshes together by Shift+Right-clicking
| | 01:59 | on the each one and then pressing Ctrl+J
. That brings up a confirmation that do
| | 02:04 | I really want to join these meshes
and the answer is yes, I really do.
| | 02:08 | And now these three meshes operate as one.
| | 02:11 | If I tab into Edit Mode, I'm editing
all of the vertices that make up all of
| | 02:15 | those three meshes together.
| | 02:16 | They are now one object.
| | 02:18 | Now, we have a second problem that
often comes up when we are joining and that
| | 02:22 | the head was done at a
different scale than the body.
| | 02:25 | So what we have to do is match the
scale of the head to match the body.
| | 02:30 | So, what I'm going to do is scale
this head down because I can either scale
| | 02:34 | the body up or the head down, I want
my Captain Knowledge to be eight and a
| | 02:39 | half units high or so.
| | 02:40 | So, I want the head to be about one
unit high because a properly proportioned
| | 02:44 | human is eight heads high.
| | 02:47 | So, that looks pretty good.
| | 02:49 | Move him down into position, just
plunk his head down on his body.
| | 02:53 | And after he gets all this knowledge of
course, his head is going to swell up or
| | 02:56 | we can design a bobble head maybe.
| | 02:59 | So we are going to scale this down to
fit the reference image and now we have
| | 03:04 | Captain Knowledge and can join the head
to the torso by Shift+Right-clicking on
| | 03:09 | the torso, doing the Ctrl+J and
that's how you join meshes together.
| | 03:14 | The other way to separate meshes if we
wanted to separate a part and let's say
| | 03:18 | substitute in a different helmet, all
we need to do is tab into Edit Mode,
| | 03:23 | select all of the linked vertices or
select whatever vertices there are that
| | 03:27 | we want to separate and then press P
on the keyboard and we can separate our
| | 03:32 | selected ones.
| | 03:33 | And now that has brought that
object out and now the helmet is a
| | 03:38 | separate object.
| | 03:39 | To drop the helmet back in place
all we need to do is right-click.
| | 03:42 | So, I'm going to go ahead and join the
helmet back up because Captain Knowledge
| | 03:46 | will never be taking off his helmet.
| | 03:48 | And that's how you append and link
assets and join and separate meshes
| | 03:52 | together in Blender.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Sculpting basics| 00:00 | Now let's go over to Sculpting
Mode and we are going to start with
| | 00:05 | Captain-complete and we are
going to go into Sculpt Mode.
| | 00:06 | Our cursor changes to that same
circle of influence that we saw under
| | 00:10 | Proportional Editing.
| | 00:11 | The difference is that now if we press
N we bring up the Sculpt Properties Mode
| | 00:16 | instead of the Mesh Property Mode.
| | 00:17 | Here is our toolbar, if you will, of
all the different tools that we can use
| | 00:20 | when we are sculpting.
| | 00:21 | Now, I'm going to go ahead and press
Ctrl+Up Arrow and that maximizes the
| | 00:27 | current window to occupy
your entire physical space.
| | 00:30 | So now I just have the one huge window.
| | 00:32 | To go back all I need to
do is Ctrl+Up Arrow again.
| | 00:35 | That just allows me to
use all of my screen space.
| | 00:38 | Now, as I zoom in my circle stays the same size.
| | 00:41 | So I'm actually working on a smaller area.
| | 00:44 | So as you zoom in by nature you will be
working on a smaller area of the mesh.
| | 00:49 | The Sculpting tool has a
couple of different modes.
| | 00:52 | One is to draw it out and I'm
operating on this side, but because I have the
| | 00:56 | Mirror Modifier, you can see
what I'm doing on this other side.
| | 00:59 | So as I operate over here
you can watch over here.
| | 01:02 | So Draw draws it out towards you and
it's almost like you are reaching in, you
| | 01:06 | are pulling this thing towards you.
| | 01:08 | The other opposite sort of affect is to
Smooth and what this does is it smooths
| | 01:13 | out the chest in this case.
| | 01:16 | I can also Pinch which is where I'm at a
very small level just grabbing that one
| | 01:20 | vertex and pinching that and pulling
it towards you, just like as if you were
| | 01:25 | reaching in with your fingers
and pinching it bit of clay.
| | 01:27 | The other way to do is Inflate and
this is almost like if you stuck a straw
| | 01:31 | inside here and you just blew air inside.
| | 01:34 | It blows it up.
| | 01:35 | Now, notice I'm moving my
mouse cursor over vertices.
| | 01:39 | That's because that's the only place
that you can actually deform a mesh.
| | 01:42 | It is on the vertex, which is why all
those vertex loops were so important,
| | 01:46 | and like that.
| | 01:47 | Now, I'm adding at this case
because I'm in the Shape of Add.
| | 01:51 | I can also Subtract.
| | 01:53 | So now when I subtract on the Inflate,
it's the opposite of Inflating, which
| | 01:57 | is Deflating.
| | 01:58 | I can adjust the Size and
the Strength of my brush.
| | 02:01 | Here I'm going to have a very big
brush, I'm operating on a very broad area
| | 02:06 | or if I'm going to go ahead and work
on his helmet a little bit, I don't want
| | 02:10 | to like mesh his whole helmet, so I
want a small brush to work on just a
| | 02:14 | small area.
| | 02:15 | Now if I touch here and
it all of a sudden, whoa!
| | 02:18 | That's way too much you can always Ctrl+
Z to undo and then reduce the Strength
| | 02:24 | of the influence of whatever
mode that you are operating in.
| | 02:28 | So, Airbrush is just like
working with a normal airbrush.
| | 02:31 | As I hold the mouse down, it continues
to operate and continues to affect the mesh.
| | 02:38 | If I take off Airbrush, then once I
click it only works once and if I want it to
| | 02:43 | continue working, I had to keep clicking.
| | 02:45 | So if you are using the Sculpt Mode and
you find yourself click, click, click,
| | 02:47 | click and it gets really annoying, just
turn on Airbrush and then that way you
| | 02:51 | as long as you are holding down the
brush, it will still keep working.
| | 02:56 | So that's the Sculpt Mode inside
Blender that gives you some great tools to use
| | 03:00 | and fine tuning the appearance of your mesh.
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| Using the Subsurf modifier to smooth| 00:00 | So here we have this fairly blocky
model of Captain Knowledge and to make it a
| | 00:04 | little smoother, we have a couple of modifiers.
| | 00:07 | One is we could manually go in and
cut in more edge loops and do more
| | 00:10 | manual editing.
| | 00:11 | But I would like the computer
to do the lot of the work for me.
| | 00:14 | So we have over here
under Add Modifier > Subsurf.
| | 00:18 | So there is a couple of
different algorithms that you can use.
| | 00:22 | One is the Catmull-Clark and
| | 00:24 | Mr. Catmull and Mr. Clark came up with a great
algorithm for figuring out where to add vertices.
| | 00:30 | Effectively Blender is
creating vertices for you.
| | 00:34 | The other way is a simple subdivision,
which uses more of a mathematical
| | 00:39 | averaging technique.
| | 00:40 | Catmull-Clark is great for organic
surfaces as you can see I'm switching
| | 00:44 | between the two.
| | 00:45 | One instantly gives much better
results-- the Catmull-Clark does.
| | 00:49 | Now, there is two different levels here.
| | 00:52 | The first level is the level that you
see in your 3D View and that's usually set
| | 00:57 | to 1 because that's adequate for you
to see when you are working on the mesh.
| | 01:01 | The next level is the Render level.
| | 01:03 | When we press F12 and actually get
render of Captain and I'm going to add
| | 01:08 | in some lights by Shift-clicking on Layer 1,
which adds in the camera and the lights.
| | 01:14 | And now if press F12, I get a render
of the bottom half of Captain Knowledge.
| | 01:20 | I'll go ahead and grab it and
move it up here a little bit.
| | 01:23 | When I render, it's going to go
out and it's actually going to do two
| | 01:26 | sub-surfacing and as you can see his
chest is much smoother here because I'm
| | 01:32 | actually applying two different levels.
| | 01:34 | I can match the rendering level
to the observable level if I have a
| | 01:38 | powerful enough computer.
| | 01:40 | When I'm editing though you can see
I have all of these lines now and actually
| | 01:44 | all those lines can get a
little weary when I'm trying to edit.
| | 01:49 | So what I can do is I can turn on
Optimal Draw which turns off the drawing of
| | 01:54 | where those additional
lines are being added for me.
| | 01:57 | The last point is the place of the
Subsurf Modifier within the Modifier stack
| | 02:02 | and the Subsurf should always come last
because first we want to mirror the mesh
| | 02:07 | and then we want to subsurf the entire mesh.
| | 02:10 | If instead I subsurfed and then I
mirrored, my computer would be doing
| | 02:14 | essentially twice as much work.
| | 02:16 | It would be subsurfacing and then
would have to mirror all of those vertices
| | 02:19 | all over again.
| | 02:21 | So it's better to keep the Subsurf
at the bottom of the Modifier stack.
| | 02:25 | So use Subsurf to give yourself a nice
organic smooth shape without having to do
| | 02:30 | a lot of manual work and
adding a lot of vertices.
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| Parenting| 00:00 | Let's talk about parenting for a
minute because it's a very useful feature in
| | 00:04 | Blender when you are moving things around.
| | 00:06 | We are going to start out with Captain-
complete and now Shift-click on Layer 1
| | 00:10 | and on Layer 10 and we'll go ahead and
take Captain Knowledge out of the picture
| | 00:14 | here by Shift-clicking on Layer 3 and
look at just the lights in the scene.
| | 00:20 | This spotlight here is called the key
light and it provides the primary light
| | 00:25 | that's used for the camera.
| | 00:27 | So just like in a real camera you have a
flash on your camera and so as you move
| | 00:32 | the camera around, you want
the flash to move with it.
| | 00:36 | So the way you do that is you want
to parent this light to the camera.
| | 00:40 | You can't join them together like
we did with meshes because they are
| | 00:43 | not meshes.
| | 00:44 | One is a light, the other is a camera.
| | 00:46 | You can't join them together.
| | 00:47 | But you can parent them together, and
to parent you Shift-click on all of the
| | 00:52 | children that you want to be parented
to the camera, in this case just the
| | 00:56 | spotlight or the key light and then
Shift-click on the object that you want to
| | 01:01 | be the parent, in this case the camera.
| | 01:04 | Now you want to press Ctrl+P to make
that camera the parent of the child and now
| | 01:11 | as the parent moves around,
the children move with it.
| | 01:14 | Just like if you had little 2-year-
old kids, if you moved they would have
| | 01:18 | to move with you.
| | 01:19 | Now the child can still run around the
house like a little wild wind chime like
| | 01:22 | that, but notice there's a stretched
line between the child and the parent and
| | 01:27 | it's just showing you that this light
is parented to the camera, and so if even
| | 01:33 | though I change the relative distance
or angle between the two, still when I
| | 01:37 | move the parent by pressing G
here, the light moves with it.
| | 01:42 | If I rotate the camera,
let's go on the top view here.
| | 01:46 | Notice that the light rotates with it.
| | 01:49 | So they always stay in the same
relative orientation to the parent and I don't
| | 01:53 | have to adjust both of them, all
I have to do is adjust the parent.
| | 01:57 | So use parenting when you want to
make the properties of one object or many
| | 02:02 | objects subservient to the
properties of the parent object.
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| Working with groups| 00:00 | Groups is another way that we can
manage complexity in a very complex scene.
| | 00:04 | So let's go ahead and Shift-select
Layers 1 and 10 and that brings in all the
| | 00:09 | lights in the camera.
| | 00:11 | We can create a new group by Shift-
selecting the three lights and then we can
| | 00:15 | do it through the hotkey or through
the menu by going Object > Group > Add to
| | 00:20 | New Group.
| | 00:21 | Now since all of the objects are now
grouped, we can work with them as a
| | 00:25 | unified object.
| | 00:26 | So for example if we just select one of
the objects in the group and notice that
| | 00:31 | they have turned green now, the green
outline is for Groups, green groups.
| | 00:35 | So now once we have selected an
object from a group we can select the other
| | 00:38 | children in the group by going Select >
Grouped and then we have a whole bunch
| | 00:42 | of different options of ways to select
objects without the same type or within
| | 00:46 | the same group right here.
| | 00:48 | And now we can just grab
and move them all as a Group.
| | 00:52 | If we switch over to desktop number 1,
Desktop number 1 has this outliner over
| | 00:57 | here and now we can see that we have the
Lamps within the same layer, but now we
| | 01:03 | can also select Groups, and
now we see this Lamp Group.
| | 01:08 | So now the outliner works with the
Groups in the 3D scene to allow us to select
| | 01:12 | the different groups.
| | 01:13 | As a final note we can change the
name of this group by coming over to the
| | 01:17 | Object properties and in the Object and
Links panel, when a selected member is
| | 01:22 | part of a group, it will
have the group name down here.
| | 01:25 | So we can change this name to
something that makes it a little more useful.
| | 01:29 | Like, in this case since we have a
group of lamps we'll call on him the Lamps
| | 01:32 | Group and now you can see when I typed
it in over here, way over here in the
| | 01:36 | outliner Window, it also changed.
| | 01:38 | So now I have my Lamps Group
and I can use this grouping.
| | 01:41 | I can append and link Groups
through the Asset Management System.
| | 01:45 | So if I have a standard lighting rig
like this three-point lighting rig, I can
| | 01:49 | append this light group into any
other new project that I'm starting up.
| | 01:53 | So use Groups to organize different
or possibly dissimilar types of objects
| | 01:58 | together so that you can
work with them as one unit.
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| Understanding the endless possibilities for editing mesh with modifiers| 00:00 | While you can make an object any shape
that you want, Blender has some functions
| | 00:04 | that can help you and
modify your mesh automatically.
| | 00:07 | So let's run through them.
| | 00:09 | First, we have already talked about
the Mirror Modifier, which copies the
| | 00:12 | vertices from one side of
an object to the other side.
| | 00:15 | We've also discussed the Subsurf
Modifier that adds on more detail according to
| | 00:20 | an algorithm for you, and we've
talked a little bit about how these are
| | 00:24 | arranged in the stack.
| | 00:25 | Other modifiers include an Armature
Modifier that we'll be applying later to
| | 00:29 | Captain Knowledge when we make
the bones actually move the mesh.
| | 00:33 | We have a Bevel Modifier that can
round of the edges of any kind of hard objects.
| | 00:38 | So if you take a cube and you bevel it,
it looks like it was sanded down.
| | 00:41 | We have the Boolean
Modifier that we'll use as well.
| | 00:44 | Here's the Build Modifier that will
automatically construct or de-construct a
| | 00:48 | mesh and make it appear
to build up on the screen.
| | 00:51 | We have a Cast Modifier that Casts
certain object into a mold, curves,
| | 00:55 | and decimates.
| | 00:56 | The Displace Modifier is very useful
for making an object or surface ripple or
| | 01:01 | be displaced by a certain other texture.
| | 01:04 | We have the Explode Modifier, which
literally makes something come apart.
| | 01:08 | A Lattice Modifier is what we are
going to be using a little later on too
| | 01:12 | and that helps you stretch and bend
a mesh according to the shape of a Lattice object.
| | 01:18 | For Mesh Deform Modifier makes one mesh
be deformed by the shape of another mesh.
| | 01:23 | So this way you can link meshes together.
| | 01:26 | So for a very common use of the Mesh
Deform Modifier is for example if you do
| | 01:31 | shape keys on a standard kind of face.
| | 01:33 | If you change the face later on, you
can still use the same shape keys on the
| | 01:38 | other Mesh Deformer and
save yourself a lot of time.
| | 01:41 | Particle Instance is a way for a mesh
to emit particles and we'll go on to
| | 01:45 | particles a little bit later.
| | 01:47 | Shrinkwrap is a Modifier that makes
one object shrink or conform to another
| | 01:52 | object, sort of acting like plastic wrap.
| | 01:55 | Smooth is a Modifier that we can
add on that gives you additional finer
| | 01:58 | control over how a mesh should be
smooth so that it appears as one continues
| | 02:03 | surface when it's rendered.
| | 02:06 | The UV Project Modifier allows you to
use a texture and project the texture onto
| | 02:11 | the mesh instead of coloring the mesh itself.
| | 02:13 | It's sort of like standing in front of
a movie projector and having the movie
| | 02:17 | projector project an image onto you.
| | 02:20 | And lastly, the Wave Modifier makes a
mesh ripple as if it was the surface of
| | 02:26 | an ocean or a pond.
| | 02:27 | So that's an overview of some of
the modifiers that we have, go ahead
| | 02:30 | and explore them.
| | 02:31 | They can really save you a lot of time and
effort as you are trying to model your mesh.
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| Duplicating objects using the Array modifier| 00:00 | Another very useful Modifier in
Blender is called the Array Modifier and
| | 00:05 | you simply apply that to the
selected object and immediately you can see
| | 00:09 | that we have now two boxes.
| | 00:12 | This modifier is essential by the way
if you are modeling seats in a stadium or
| | 00:17 | in this case a brick wall or tiles on a
roof, anything where there is a lot of
| | 00:22 | the same kind of object just arrayed
either constantly or by some offset.
| | 00:27 | So here we have a set of bricks and as
we click we increase the brick count.
| | 00:31 | If you were modeling let's say studs
in a wall over panels on the side of a
| | 00:35 | building, anything where there is a lot
of repeating, we have a Relative Offset
| | 00:39 | option here which adds a little space
in between each of the bricks and this
| | 00:43 | would indicate like a
mortar kind of thing going on.
| | 00:46 | We can also do arrays of arrays.
| | 00:49 | So if we added on another Array Modifier,
now we can change and have the wall go
| | 00:54 | up, so we have this array coming across
and then let's go ahead and change this
| | 00:59 | to 0 and then the Z to 1, and now we
have stacks of bricks, and we can put a
| | 01:04 | little space in between them as
well and then we can run this up too.
| | 01:08 | So now we have a whole grid of these objects.
| | 01:11 | In this case I'm doing a brick wall.
| | 01:13 | So bricks aren't stacked like
that, because there is not a lot of
| | 01:16 | structural integrity.
| | 01:17 | So in this case what I would do is I
would just go ahead and increase this to
| | 01:21 | 2.5 let's say and then Shift+D to
duplicate this brick and bring it up and
| | 01:28 | offset it by half of a brick.
| | 01:30 | We can also model a half of a cube and
use that as the starting and ending cap
| | 01:35 | object, you just type in the name of the
object here and then this will even off
| | 01:39 | this wall, if I for example when I
came up to the corner of the wall.
| | 01:43 | That's how you use the Array
Modifier to rapidly model any kind of
| | 01:48 | situation where you have just a ton
or a hundred or a thousand objects that
| | 01:52 | are all similar.
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| Modeling a set | 00:00 | So a typical CG scene consists of
hundreds of objects, and the old saying is
| | 00:04 | that a journey of a thousand
miles begins with a single step.
| | 00:07 | So let's step on out and start using
Blender to construct the model of a
| | 00:12 | pretty complicated scene.
| | 00:13 | We are going to start out
simple and model is set.
| | 00:16 | Our training idea is to composite our
computer graphics character over a live
| | 00:21 | action plate, because that's a very
common request that comes through.
| | 00:26 | So we are going to do that.
| | 00:27 | In order to start out we need to model our set.
| | 00:31 | We have filmed a live action plate and
we've taken some measurements and so now
| | 00:35 | we are inside Blender to construct a
virtual scene that character can walk in.
| | 00:39 | That way we can remove the set, film
just him and then composite him walking
| | 00:44 | over the live action plate
and everything will match.
| | 00:46 | So to start off with in default scene
we have some lights, the camera, and the cube.
| | 00:53 | When you are compositing the camera
pretty matches the center of the universe.
| | 00:57 | So we are going to put the camera at
center, X and Y is 0, and the camera was
| | 01:02 | mounted on a pretty short tripod
that was three feet off the ground.
| | 01:06 | Now I'm going to switch to our 4-up
modeling layout, which is what I like to use
| | 01:09 | when I'm modeling
complicated objects and scenes.
| | 01:12 | This provides me a side, front,
and top view of the CG world.
| | 01:18 | For right now I'm going to hide
the lamps by moving them to a layer.
| | 01:22 | So we press M to move them to a
different layer, and are going to move them to
| | 01:27 | layer 9, and then we are not going to
view that layer so that they are hidden
| | 01:33 | from view until we need them.
| | 01:35 | When we need them we just re-enable
that layer by Shift-clicking it and it will
| | 01:39 | come back into the CG world, but for
right now I don't want them to distract me.
| | 01:44 | First up, we know that the
sidewalk was 16 feet from the camera.
| | 01:48 | So our camera is facing forward, and so
we are going to come out here about 16
| | 01:52 | feet, left-click with the mouse cursor
and put the mouse cursor right about at
| | 01:57 | ground level, and from top view
press space Add > Mesh > Plane.
| | 02:03 | The Mesh Plane is simply a flat
surface that can be rendered and seen and
| | 02:08 | textured and has some substance and
we can actually see it in the CG world.
| | 02:12 | Now the sidewalk in the real world
is 4 feet wide and I'm using feet as
| | 02:16 | my Blender units.
| | 02:18 | So I want this plane to be 4 feet wide.
| | 02:21 | So as good boys do that, one is to
just press S and then Y so that as I scale
| | 02:28 | and move my mouse cursor away
from the plane, it scales up.
| | 02:31 | And if I hold down the Ctrl key, that
controls the scale to be rounded units.
| | 02:39 | By scaling the cube twice, it's
now gone from 2 to 4 units wide.
| | 02:43 | We are going to place this
center 16 feet from the camera.
| | 02:48 | We know the camera is at the center, so
location of 16 in the Y direction puts
| | 02:52 | it 16 feet from the camera.
| | 02:54 | Now the sidewalk was pretty long.
| | 02:56 | So we are going to scale it in the X
direction by pressing S and X and then
| | 03:00 | moving our mouse cursor to
stretch that sidewalk all the way up.
| | 03:05 | Now at some point 35 feet down
the way is where the door was.
| | 03:10 | So let's scale the sidewalk to nearly
down the 35 feet, then 20, 30, 35 feet.
| | 03:19 | Then we had a little bit of a door.
| | 03:21 | So we are going to go into Edit Mode.
| | 03:23 | Now notice we have Object Mode right now
we working with the plane as an object.
| | 03:27 | There are other modes that are
available for Mesh Object and these are accessed
| | 03:32 | by clicking the Mode selector.
| | 03:34 | As I mentioned on the first video your
menu and the options of what's available
| | 03:39 | depend on the mode that you are in.
| | 03:41 | Now in Object Mode I'm working with the
object overall when I work in Edit Mode,
| | 03:45 | I'm changing the shape and
their construction of the object.
| | 03:49 | When I work in Sculpt Mode, I'm working
like a sculptor with tools to shape and
| | 03:54 | transform the Mesh Object.
| | 03:57 | When I get into my Paint Mode that's
used for painting and we are going to cover
| | 04:00 | those modes when we talk
about Materials and Shading.
| | 04:03 | So for right now let's go into Edit Mode.
| | 04:05 | Now that's the way you go
into Edit Mode through the mouse.
| | 04:08 | The way you go into Edit Mode
through the keyboard is to press Tab key.
| | 04:12 | So pressing the Tab key
brings us in and out of Edit Mode.
| | 04:16 | A plane consists of four vertices.
| | 04:18 | Right now they are all selected
and I can tell that they are all
| | 04:20 | selected, because up here in my
header I see that I have four vertices
| | 04:25 | and four are selected.
| | 04:26 | I have four edges, which are the
outside edges to the plane, and I have one face.
| | 04:32 | So vertices, edges and faces are shown up here.
| | 04:35 | The first number is how many there
are selected, and then how many total.
| | 04:42 | So right now I have 0
out of 4 vertices selected.
| | 04:47 | To select some more vertices I can use
the Bounding Box command press B and now
| | 04:51 | my cursor changes to our box cursor.
| | 04:54 | If I left-click and drag around those
vertices and led up on the mouse cursor
| | 04:59 | whatever vertices are
inside that box are selected.
| | 05:03 | To unselect some vertices, I press B
again, but now I use the Right mouse button
| | 05:08 | and hold that down and drag it over
the vertices and they are deselected.
| | 05:13 | So left to select, right to deselect.
| | 05:17 | To Extrude an edge, I press E to
extrude and now I can extrude the vertices
| | 05:23 | or their whole edge.
| | 05:24 | I want to extrude the whole edge,
because I'm creating that little sidewalk
| | 05:28 | area for the turn area.
| | 05:30 | When I'm working in Edit Mode, I have a
couple of different selections and tools
| | 05:35 | that I would like to discuss.
| | 05:36 | One is the Shaded View.
| | 05:38 | Whether I'm working in a Wireframe or
Solid or a Shaded or a Textured view, it
| | 05:42 | gives me a better quality feeling.
| | 05:45 | Another control is when I rotate or
scale something, does it scale around the
| | 05:50 | center of the Object, around my cursor,
around the Median Point and like that
| | 05:56 | the other is my widget, my selector
widget, which we discussed earlier when we
| | 05:59 | are moving objects around.
| | 06:01 | Blender has a Proportional
Editing that I can turn on and off here.
| | 06:05 | And when I turned it on, then I have my
selection of how I want my Falloffs to
| | 06:09 | go, and we'll be using this tool when
we get into a little more detail of high
| | 06:13 | resolution sculpting.
| | 06:16 | Here is the Snap tool, if I want
to snap things exactly to a grid.
| | 06:21 | And then here is my selection tools.
| | 06:23 | Right now I'm selecting
Vertices shown by the dots.
| | 06:26 | If I have hold Shift and click I
can also select Edges and Faces.
| | 06:32 | My last control is an OpenGL
Render, which renders this viewport.
| | 06:36 | It gives me a quick non-photographic
quality, but a good quick reference
| | 06:40 | render of the window.
| | 06:42 | So back here we are going to now
right-click on this edge and just work
| | 06:47 | with Edges and Vertices.
| | 06:49 | So I can either select the edge or Shift-
click and select those two vertices and
| | 06:54 | extrude that edge out to meet the door.
| | 06:57 | And the door did about a four
feet turn into the building.
| | 07:01 | So now we need the building.
| | 07:02 | We are done with the sidewalk.
| | 07:04 | So let's go back and grab that cube
and we can use that cube as the basis
| | 07:08 | for our building.
| | 07:09 | So again we grab it G, move it over
here, scale it in the X direction.
| | 07:14 | Now you can start scaling and then
press X and it re-constrains it to the
| | 07:20 | X direction.
| | 07:21 | And I happen to test and then
measure that the building was actually 9
| | 07:25 | feet high.
| | 07:27 | So since my center of my building is
in the center vertically, I want my
| | 07:31 | building to be at four-and-a-half units
high and then the bottom of building is
| | 07:36 | a ground level and the top is 9 feet high.
| | 07:39 | So now I have a rough approximation of
our CG scene and I have covered most of
| | 07:44 | the major tools that are used along
the toolbar in Object Mode and then Edit
| | 07:49 | Mode to change and model the shapes.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. LightingLighting overview| 00:00 | This chapter is on lighting.
| | 00:02 | Lighting is one of the most critical
aspects of CG bringing realism to the
| | 00:08 | scene as well as being able to see
anything when the camera actually tries to
| | 00:11 | do a render.
| | 00:12 | So let's select the Material Context in
the Buttons window here, right-click on
| | 00:16 | the Mesh and then over in the
Buttons window select a New Material.
| | 00:20 | Now we can mark this material Shadeless,
but means that this material does not
| | 00:25 | need any light in order to be rendered.
| | 00:28 | And if I press F12 now, you can see I
get a very flat shadeless material that
| | 00:34 | isn't an exact color.
| | 00:36 | Even if I didn't have any other lights
in the scene, everything else would be
| | 00:39 | black except for Captain Knowledge.
| | 00:42 | But if a material is not shadeless, it
means it's going to react to the light
| | 00:47 | that is in the scene and the color that
you see is a result of the color of the
| | 00:51 | material plus the color and the
texture of the lights that are shining on it.
| | 00:56 | Now the material for a lamp in this case,
this is the Sun Lamp has a color as well.
| | 01:03 | So I could make the color of this lamp
let's say red, if we were inside of a
| | 01:08 | volcano or something like that.
| | 01:10 | Whatever object that light hits is
colored red and you can see that since it's
| | 01:15 | the Sun Lamp and it shining down on
Captain Knowledge, the tops of his
| | 01:19 | shoulders are red.
| | 01:21 | You also need lamps to cast shadows.
| | 01:24 | In order to cast shadows over here in
the Scene Render panel, you need to enable
| | 01:29 | shadow calculation and ray tracing
if you are using ray traced shadows.
| | 01:34 | Now just to make things a little
more complicated, there's two kinds of
| | 01:38 | shadow calculations.
| | 01:40 | I'm going to go ahead and crank this up to PC.
| | 01:42 | It gives us a little bigger render right here.
| | 01:45 | Now when we render, the material
for the Sun Lamp and this is the lamp
| | 01:49 | subcontext for the Sun Lamp,
I have Ray Shadows turned.
| | 01:53 | So now I'm going to be using Ray
Traced Shadows and not Buffer Shadows.
| | 01:59 | Other lamps like this Spot Lamp,
we have our choice of Ray Shadows or
| | 02:04 | Buffer Shadows.
| | 02:05 | Buffer Shadows are faster to calculate,
but they are a little less accurate.
| | 02:10 | Coming back to our colored lamps, red
is obviously very angry color, yellow is
| | 02:16 | a nice warm color and a blue lamp will
actually make the scene appear a little colder.
| | 02:22 | Almost like he is getting
frost on the top of his shoulder.
| | 02:24 | Now computer graphics lamps are a
perfect calculation of light and in the real
| | 02:31 | world, light isn't therefore perfect.
| | 02:33 | So we can texture all of these kinds
of lamps with a texture here by adding
| | 02:38 | the texture, creating the texture and
then for the lamp, applying that texture
| | 02:45 | to a color.
| | 02:48 | And usually you use an off
shade of the same basic color.
| | 02:52 | So we'll go ahead and Sample this
color and tweak it a little bit, maybe make
| | 02:57 | it a little darker.
| | 02:59 | And now since we have used this
Cloud Texture, the lamp won't be exactly
| | 03:03 | perfect and it will have a little
variation across the surface, which adds a
| | 03:08 | lot to the realism.
| | 03:09 | Now this Sun Lamp is designated to
work on all of the objects in the scene.
| | 03:14 | I can restrict this lamp to light only
objects on the same layer or layer group
| | 03:20 | that this lamp is on.
| | 03:22 | So if I press M, I can see that this
lamp is a member of this layer, Layer 10,
| | 03:28 | Captain Knowledge, when I
press M he is on Layer 3.
| | 03:33 | So if I restrict the Sun to
light only objects on a shared layer.
| | 03:38 | Now when I press Render, Captain
Knowledge's shoulders aren't lit blue because
| | 03:43 | the Sun Lamp is not affecting
Captain Knowledge on his layer.
| | 03:47 | Finally all lamps have
this Preview panel in common.
| | 03:51 | And in this Preview panel, I can change
the kind of lamp, and the kind of lamp
| | 03:56 | calculation that's used in
designating this particular light source.
| | 04:01 | So I can change this Sun to be a
Spotlight for example or an Area light.
| | 04:06 | We are going to go over all these
different kinds of lights and this
| | 04:08 | Preview panel tries to show you the
kind of light that is generated by this
| | 04:13 | kind of lamp.
| | 04:14 | So in this video, we saw the basic
capabilities and the commonalities of all
| | 04:18 | of the different kinds of lights and
what they do and what they act on inside Blender.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Omni lamp| 00:00 | Let's start out with the
simplest lamp, the Omni Lamp.
| | 00:04 | Now I'm going to disable Layer 10 here,
so I'm left with only my spotlight and
| | 00:09 | I'm going to go into the Shaded view,
and if your computer has the power, then
| | 00:13 | Shaded view tries to show you in the 3D
view, an approximation of the light and
| | 00:18 | where it's coming from and
what it's going to look like.
| | 00:21 | So in the Preview panel let's the
change the Spot light to be just a
| | 00:26 | regular Lamp.
| | 00:27 | That's a general Omni Lamp.
| | 00:29 | The Omni Lamp doesn't have a
cone or anything like that.
| | 00:32 | It's just a little circle and as we
move this around, you can see that it gives
| | 00:37 | a very even light source,
just provides general lighting.
| | 00:43 | So it's also a good Lamp to start
with when we are talking about lamps and
| | 00:47 | what they do.
| | 00:48 | So we have already discussed that a
lamp has a color that I can set here in
| | 00:52 | the RGB sliders.
| | 00:53 | If I take away Blue, I get a Yellow color.
| | 00:56 | It has an Energy, puts
out brighter or less light.
| | 01:02 | It also has a fall off Distance, which
means that after so many units the light
| | 01:07 | kind of just gradually fades away.
| | 01:10 | So if it has a very short fall off, it
means that it's very bright when it's
| | 01:16 | up close against something but has a
very little effect on objects that are far away.
| | 01:22 | How that Distance falls off is
controlled by these controls here.
| | 01:26 | A Lamp can light an object on the same layer.
| | 01:30 | We've already talked about that in general.
| | 01:32 | This Lamp can also be a negative lamp,
which means it actually takes away that color.
| | 01:37 | So a common use of this is to put this
under someone's chin as a negative lamp
| | 01:43 | and it will increase the shadows on their face.
| | 01:45 | When we talked about materials, we
talked about having a diffused and a specular
| | 01:50 | color and if we don't want this lamp to
create any specular kind of highlights
| | 01:56 | or shine if you will, then we can turn
off specular otherwise it will cause the
| | 02:02 | glare in the highlights.
| | 02:04 | That covers the basic lamp controls.
| | 02:05 | Now in the Shadows controls, we can
have this lamp cast to shadow, I'm going to
| | 02:10 | go over here to the top view
and move the lamp just above him.
| | 02:14 | Now we can see that it's casting a
shadow down on him and his shadow.
| | 02:19 | When we do a render, what we cast
down on to this ground plane because this
| | 02:24 | ground is setup to receive shadows.
| | 02:26 | The Shadow can be normally black, the
absence of light, or we can even color
| | 02:31 | the shadow if we want.
| | 02:34 | Now when we render, the Lamp
will actually cast a blue shadow.
| | 02:37 | You would want to use colored shadows
if you are trying to simulate the effect
| | 02:42 | of a lot of ambient light in the scene.
| | 02:45 | In addition to illuminating an
object, we can restrict it to have Only
| | 02:49 | casting shadows.
| | 02:50 | So now it's not actually going to
light him up, but it's only going to cast a
| | 02:54 | shadow on to a material.
| | 02:56 | If there were other lights in the
scene, then you would have to use them to
| | 02:59 | actually light the material so
you could actually see the object.
| | 03:03 | Texturing, we have covered, and you
have a number of different Texture slots.
| | 03:07 | As you add these different Textures on,
these Textures can layer on one another
| | 03:12 | and for the Lamp, they would add to each other.
| | 03:13 | You can mix and match textures to
affect these as the color of the lamp itself,
| | 03:19 | through the various mix methods that are
standard to all Textures within Blender
| | 03:23 | or you can have it also affect the Shadow.
| | 03:26 | Now when a lamp casts the shadow
with ray tracing, it's a very specific
| | 03:31 | sharp shadow.
| | 03:32 | As you can see here and I'm going to
go ahead and increase the Render Size a
| | 03:36 | little bit up to a PC Size.
| | 03:39 | So when we do the full render, you can
see that this shadow has a very hard edge
| | 03:44 | and a lot of times depending on what
you are casting on whether it is in a lot
| | 03:46 | of ambient light, you don't actually get
a very hard edge, only in the middle of
| | 03:50 | the desert where you'd have very
little scattering, would you actually get a
| | 03:53 | firm hard shadow like this.
| | 03:55 | So the Lamp has the controls to
allow you to set the Soft size.
| | 04:00 | So if we set the Soft Size to something like 5.
| | 04:04 | Now when we do a render, the
Shadow is totally dispersed.
| | 04:09 | By playing with this number we can
say set it to like 4, we get a very
| | 04:15 | soft shadow.
| | 04:16 | If we want to reduce that grain unless
we have to bump up the number of samples,
| | 04:21 | and by setting it to 3 or so.
| | 04:23 | So now when we render we have a very
soft shadow that is cast almost as if he
| | 04:29 | was standing under a tree.
| | 04:31 | So depending on the shadows, you can
send a lot of visual cues to the viewer and
| | 04:36 | suggest certain things are going on in
the environment, based on the lighting
| | 04:41 | and the shadows that you set up.
| | 04:43 | So these are the basic lamp settings
for the Omni Lamp and they also form the
| | 04:47 | basis for all the other lamps as well.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with the Area lamp| 00:01 | Now the Omni Lamp is what's known as a
point source and the light came from that
| | 00:05 | one point.
| | 00:06 | The Area Lamp is different and that in
studio lighting, you usually use a light
| | 00:11 | box or a diffuser in front of a light
globe, to diffuse the light and make the
| | 00:16 | light come from a broader surface area.
| | 00:18 | The Area Lamp is what we have in
Blender that allows you to simulate that.
| | 00:23 | Because the light is coming from a
broader area, shadows are by nature a lot
| | 00:28 | softer and the lighting is a lot
more even across a broader area.
| | 00:33 | For the area lamp we have this
additional control over here in the Lamp panel
| | 00:37 | tat allows us to change and choose
between a square lamp which we have here,
| | 00:42 | which is ten units wide, a broad
light area. It simulates almost like a light
| | 00:47 | coming from a whole room sized, diffused
set of lamps, to a rectangular area, to
| | 00:54 | where we can now simulate almost the
light coming from, say, a fluorescent bulb.
| | 01:01 | So if we position this over him and
rotate it around, now if we do the render,
| | 01:06 | it looks like he's being lit by
literally one fluorescent bulb over his head.
| | 01:11 | This lamp is directional and that it
casts light out into a certain direction.
| | 01:16 | That's why I had to rotate it.
| | 01:18 | If I rotated it this way and rotated
the other one away, if the lamp isn't
| | 01:24 | casting any light directly on to the
object, all the object gets is some ambient
| | 01:30 | light, some background scatter.
| | 01:32 | The area light you can also Gamma
correct, right off the bat, to make the light
| | 01:36 | appear a little more realistic, as if
it was captured on film or by a camera.
| | 01:40 | In addition to the normal ray tracing
shadows, Adaptive QMC, for example, if we
| | 01:45 | press Enter, now we have this one
layer shining right on front of him.
| | 01:50 | I should note too that the area lamp,
when it's very small, can give a very
| | 01:53 | piercing, very intense hot light.
| | 01:56 | Now the shadow here is being
calculated one way, we can also do a kind of a
| | 02:02 | jittered method which is where the lamp
is jittered around a little bit and that
| | 02:06 | compensates for some of the
hardness that an area lamp can give.
| | 02:10 | Now a sample set at 7, the lamp has
been jittered around 7 units around up here
| | 02:15 | and so the shadow that it casts is an
average of all of those and so it's a much
| | 02:20 | more diffused shadow.
| | 02:21 | Umbra simulates using an umbrella in
the back of the lamp, to further scatter
| | 02:26 | the light around and Dither and Noise
are different sampling methods you can use
| | 02:31 | to fine-tune the appearance of the shadow.
| | 02:34 | So the area lamp is a specialty lamp
that you want to use when you're trying to
| | 02:38 | simulate lamp coming from a non-point
source, like from a fluorescent bulb or a
| | 02:43 | very broad high array, say, like in a
gymnasium where there is a lot of lamps up there.
| | 02:49 | They are very powerful but they are
very far away, so the net effect is a very
| | 02:53 | broad and pretty even area lighting.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Spot lamp| 00:00 | In addition to all the other standard
controls, the spot light is a little
| | 00:04 | special in that has a long history of
use since stage and video productions.
| | 00:09 | It creates light from a point
source, but casts it out into a cone.
| | 00:15 | It also can produce
several kinds of shadows as well.
| | 00:19 | The most important thing about the
Spot Lamp, it has a cone and the shape of
| | 00:23 | this cone is shown on the
material that we're casting on here.
| | 00:27 | Now we have a narrow spot, which is
shown here at 45 degrees, or we can make
| | 00:32 | this spot a very wide spot, by
changing that to 90 degrees and now the lamp
| | 00:38 | casts light out over a 90 degree cone.
| | 00:43 | The effect of that is casting out the
same amount of light over a much wider
| | 00:47 | surface and diffusing the shadow a bit.
| | 00:50 | We can also control the lens that is in
front of a real physical spot lamp, but
| | 00:55 | this is a virtual lamp.
| | 00:57 | So we have an additional control to
where if I set this back to 45, if I set my
| | 01:02 | spot boundary to let's say a very
narrow number, now I get a very hard edge
| | 01:09 | where the lamp stops.
| | 01:12 | Now in a very smoky nightclub, we have
what's called a halo effect that comes
| | 01:17 | out, which is whereas the
lamp casts out its light.
| | 01:21 | I'll go ahead and set this up to a
pretty large number so that you can see
| | 01:25 | it, and enable it.
| | 01:26 | Now you can see in our Preview
that we have a halo coming out.
| | 01:31 | That simulates the light coming
down through a smoky atmosphere, a
| | 01:35 | dusty atmosphere.
| | 01:37 | In addition to Ray Shadows, which
provides a very accurate shadow model, as you
| | 01:42 | can see here with the very crisp outline,
we can used buffered shadows and have
| | 01:47 | our choice of a classic or a halfway
classic or irregular computation method for
| | 01:53 | figuring out, very quickly and
faster where the shadows should fall.
| | 01:59 | As you can see the irregular gives a
pretty good shadow outline without invoking
| | 02:03 | all of the overhead
expense of a ray shadow trace.
| | 02:07 | In addition, the spot light
has a clip start and a clip end.
| | 02:12 | In that objects that are closer than the
clip start will not be lit by the lamp.
| | 02:17 | So if I change this to something really
big like ten or so, you can see in the
| | 02:23 | 3D View, this little ray.
| | 02:26 | That shows that any objects within this
distance and this distance will be lit
| | 02:30 | by the light, but if the light gets
closer than that to an object, the light
| | 02:35 | won't be picked up or
won't be cast on to the object.
| | 02:38 | Here let me turn the Halo off a
little bit so that you can see it better.
| | 02:45 | So changing it to 20, now as you can
see in 3D View, this little ray has
| | 02:51 | little dots that show the beginning
and the end and any objects within this
| | 02:56 | range will have a shadow cast.
| | 02:59 | Since our Captain Knowledge is not
within that range, he'll be lit by the lamp,
| | 03:05 | but he won't cast a shadow.
| | 03:07 | As you can tell, when you have a lot
of lamps shadow casting can be a very
| | 03:11 | computationally intensive process
and take a lot of processing time.
| | 03:16 | So we try to give you a lot of
easy ways to speed up the whole shadow
| | 03:20 | computation process to avoid ray
shadows and use buffered shadows instead.
| | 03:24 | In addition to a normal round spot lamp,
there is attachments you can put on
| | 03:30 | a real spot lamp on the side that are
called barn doors and they square off
| | 03:34 | the light.
| | 03:35 | So now when we do a render with the
barn doors on, you can see that instead
| | 03:40 | of having a round outline, we have a
square outline where the light is cut
| | 03:46 | off by these barn doors.
| | 03:48 | So this shows you how to use the spot
lamp as a specialty lamp in setting up
| | 03:52 | your lighting situation.
| | 03:54 | I find that the spot lamp makes a
great key lamp for the camera, so I usually
| | 04:00 | parent my spot lamp to the camera and
use it as the lamp that provides the major
| | 04:07 | illumination for the scene.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Sun, Sky, and Atmosphere lamps| 00:00 | The Sun Lamp in Blender simulates the
real sun in the kind of sunlight you would
| | 00:05 | get from the actual sun in your scene.
| | 00:08 | Now, the sun is a directional light,
just like the spot light, and the direction
| | 00:11 | is shown by this dashed line here.
| | 00:14 | So right now the sun is shining towards
the camera, kind of simulating a sunset
| | 00:18 | when the sun is appearing in to you
and you're facing west or the sun can be
| | 00:23 | behind you and by pressing R we can
rotate the sun so that it's facing away from you.
| | 00:28 | When you do a render now, the sun, even
though it's not pointing directly at the
| | 00:33 | mountains, still lights up the mountains
here, because the sun simulates the sun
| | 00:38 | out in outer space, where it's like
an infinitely far distance from you.
| | 00:43 | So all of the light rays are
coming in parallel into the scene.
| | 00:47 | It's not like from a spot light, where
they're coming from one specific light
| | 00:50 | source and then they're fanning out in a cone.
| | 00:52 | Here with the sun, it's parallel when
it's covering the entire scene and bathing
| | 00:57 | the entire scene in a very even amount of light.
| | 00:59 | In addition to the standard Falloff
controls and energy, we also have Sky and
| | 01:04 | Atmosphere controls.
| | 01:06 | When you turn on Sky, now the Sun Lamp
will, depending on whether it's a sunrise
| | 01:12 | or a sunset, affect this color
of the sky in different ways.
| | 01:17 | Normally, if the color of the sky is a
combination of colors set in the World
| | 01:22 | settings over here under Material,
World, where we've set the horizon color
| | 01:27 | and the zenith color.
| | 01:28 | Now, based on these colors, Blender
figures out what kind of atmosphere
| | 01:32 | you're in.
| | 01:33 | So if we were simulating our atmosphere
on Mars, we would use different colors
| | 01:38 | and the sun on Mars would
affect it differently as well.
| | 01:42 | But on Earth here, we have blues.
| | 01:44 | So now when we affect the Sky color,
based on the Turbidity, and the mixing
| | 01:49 | method, we alter the color of the sky.
| | 01:53 | So here we have a certain mixing
effect that goes into effect with an average
| | 01:57 | amount of Turbidity.
| | 01:58 | Turbidity is the amount of dust
and pollution that's kicked up in the
| | 02:02 | outdoor atmospheres.
| | 02:03 | So to simulate something like smoggy
downtown, and I won't name a city, but
| | 02:09 | you're going to get a lot of these
orange, brown colors coming in, and which is
| | 02:13 | also shown for you here in the Preview.
| | 02:16 | Or to set it back to of a more of
clean atmosphere, like on beautiful white,
| | 02:23 | we would set it here.
| | 02:24 | Now, if the mountains were in the way,
we would see that we can start to get
| | 02:26 | some pinks and blues down near the horizon.
| | 02:30 | The amount of Mix factors set here, and
so now by mixing in and changing the Mix
| | 02:36 | factor, we get more of these pinks now,
and now the sun itself you can start to
| | 02:41 | see is whitening out the zenith.
| | 02:45 | If we change the Mix method to say Add
and let's say just a little bit of Add,
| | 02:51 | now the sunlight is adding this white.
| | 02:53 | It's mixing in based on the Turbidity
and the amount of scattering that would be
| | 02:57 | up there, to produce a beautiful teal color.
| | 03:01 | Similarly, we can simulate a very thin
atmosphere by telling the Sun Lamp to
| | 03:06 | darken the atmosphere.
| | 03:08 | Now this is almost like a moonscape,
if you will, where there is very little
| | 03:12 | atmosphere to be scattered and, in
fact, the sun is darkening the horizons.
| | 03:17 | These other setting is in fact how the
horizon and the distance to the horizon
| | 03:23 | is affected by the Sun Lamp.
| | 03:25 | Then we have a whole another
set of Atmosphere settings.
| | 03:29 | The atmosphere goes hand in hand and
simulates the haze and the pollution that's
| | 03:33 | in the atmosphere, unfortunately.
| | 03:35 | Again, the goal is try to get to
realistic lighting and lighting situation that
| | 03:39 | affect how the scene looks.
| | 03:41 | The atmosphere that was shot in 'Toy
Story' versus the atmosphere that were shot
| | 03:46 | in 'Blade Runner' are two totally
different atmosphere conditions.
| | 03:50 | In here, Atmosphere adds on to all
these Sky settings and goes hand in hand by
| | 03:55 | simulating the haze and the
pollution that's in the atmosphere.
| | 03:59 | This covers how fast light is
scattered based on what's happening in
| | 04:03 | the atmosphere.
| | 04:04 | So let's go ahead and set his back to mixing.
| | 04:08 | Set it to about noon, by rotating the Sun Lamp.
| | 04:15 | So now, if we set like say the
Extinction factor, to something really little.
| | 04:24 | Now, the light isn't getting
from the sun to the ground.
| | 04:28 | So there is a lot of pollution or
scattering in the upper atmosphere.
| | 04:32 | If the light doesn't travel as far
through the atmosphere, and so it's cut off
| | 04:37 | or faces extinction faster,
based on this setting.
| | 04:41 | So in this video we saw how to
use the Sun Lamp, to give a rough
| | 04:45 | approximation to the different
atmospheric conditions, you would want to
| | 04:48 | simulate in your CG scene.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Hemisphere lamp| 00:00 | Another light in our lighting
arsenal is the Hemisphere light.
| | 00:05 | The Hemi light is a directional
light and it has a fall-off distance like
| | 00:09 | all the other lights.
| | 00:11 | What makes the Hemi different is
that it does not have a shadow.
| | 00:15 | It cannot cast a shadow and so all of
the light coming from it is very soft and
| | 00:21 | makes an excellent fill light.
| | 00:24 | When I use it as a very high intense
level, it provides a very even lighting
| | 00:29 | across the entire surface.
| | 00:31 | As you can see, there is no shadows.
| | 00:35 | In real life motion, picture and
photography, you usually have a guy walk right
| | 00:40 | in front of the actor backwards with a
big white plain, and that's too reflect
| | 00:45 | any diffused sunlight back on to the
actor's face and the use of the Hemi light
| | 00:50 | is very commonly used to do
that to provide a nice even fill.
| | 00:55 | The other way you use a Hemi light is
for side light or fill light to round out
| | 01:01 | the shadows and to soften the shadows
on the character, so there aren't a lot
| | 01:05 | of hard noticeable shadows and the
character has a nice even lighting to him or her.
| | 01:12 | The Hemi light can also be used in
negative mode just like all other lights, to
| | 01:16 | actually take away light.
| | 01:18 | Now you can see this Hemi light is
actually darkening the front of him, while
| | 01:23 | the side Hemi light, which is
positive, is actually lighting him up.
| | 01:28 | So you can use the Hemi light up tight
and up close on the actor, and it will
| | 01:33 | give him a real sullen look like if
you are going for a Vampire or some kind
| | 01:38 | of dark character.
| | 01:40 | You can use this pointing upwards like
you use to do with flash lights around
| | 01:44 | the campfire if you even want to do
that, to highlight the under side of the
| | 01:48 | cheek bones and the eye ridges.
| | 01:50 | So in this video we saw a little bit
about the Hemi light and how it rounds out
| | 01:54 | the lighting rig and provides additional
supplemental lighting that you can play
| | 01:57 | with to use to provide better even
balanced lighting to your character.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with Ambient and Radiosity lighting| 00:01 | So now that we've covered the basic
kinds of lamps that add light to a scene,
| | 00:05 | I would like to cover what's called
ambient occlusion or ambient lighting and
| | 00:10 | radiosity or other people
call that global illumination.
| | 00:14 | There's lots of different terms that
are thrown about, and I can just present
| | 00:17 | you the way Blender
approaches the problem of lighting.
| | 00:21 | So in this first scene, which is
called 0 point, when you press F12 you get a
| | 00:28 | very quick render of a sphere
sitting on a little pedestal.
| | 00:33 | However, you'll notice there
are no lights in the scene at all.
| | 00:37 | So where is this light
coming from and why is it so flat?
| | 00:41 | That's called ambient light.
| | 00:43 | Ambient light is set up in your
Shading World, World panel down here under
| | 00:49 | ambient light, and here's where you
set the color and the brightness of
| | 00:53 | the ambient light.
| | 00:55 | Ambient light is light that is in a room.
Imagine if you are in a room and the
| | 00:59 | sun is shining outside and there
aren't any lights on inside the house.
| | 01:04 | Inside the room there's still lights
that is coming through the windows and
| | 01:08 | it's filtered in and it's bouncing all
around and that's called ambient light.
| | 01:11 | We can simulate the different colors and
intensities of ambient light by setting
| | 01:15 | these values in these red,
green and blue sliders here.
| | 01:19 | Each material in Blender then is
affected by that ambient light to the degree,
| | 01:26 | which is specified here in the Shading
Material Shaders panel down here under
| | 01:32 | this Ambient Light slider, and this
surface is affected by combining the base
| | 01:39 | material plus all the other lights
that are shining on it and half of the
| | 01:45 | ambient light which as you saw
was white, so half of white is gray.
| | 01:49 | So that's why this is a gray color.
| | 01:51 | Now if we were filming let's say our CG
scene in a volcano or underground and
| | 01:58 | we use more of a red color then you can
see that this globe in addition to the
| | 02:04 | lighting that's in the scene, this
globe would be affected and be colored red
| | 02:09 | because there's a red
color that's in that scene.
| | 02:12 | Now I'm using the Render window here,
because the Render window is kind of neat
| | 02:16 | in that if you press J, you
go back to the previous render.
| | 02:20 | So you can jump back and forth between
renders just by pressing J in this key.
| | 02:25 | So as you work through this exercise
with me, go ahead and be pressing this J
| | 02:29 | back and forth and you can be comparing
the different kinds of renders you can get.
| | 02:33 | The next topic is called Ambient Occlusion.
| | 02:36 | Ambient Occlusion happens when you have
creases and corners in a room and the
| | 02:42 | light cannot scatter and be reflected
as much into a corner as much it is on
| | 02:49 | the flat wall.
| | 02:50 | So you get this darkening kind
of effect as you go into corners.
| | 02:56 | Here we have a sphere that's in a little
box, I just made a cute little set here,
| | 03:01 | that is being lit only by
ambient light or ambient occlusion.
| | 03:06 | Other people call this a dirt shader
because this sort of simulates the dirt
| | 03:10 | that might accumulate in an old house.
| | 03:13 | And here is a little set and this is a
standard kind of lighting test set that
| | 03:18 | we'll be using throughout this video and
then in subsequent videos where we talk
| | 03:22 | about lighting because it provides a
very nice controlled lighting situation.
| | 03:26 | In this render, we have the different
shades of gray computed based on the
| | 03:32 | ambient light color, the degree to
which each material is affected by the
| | 03:38 | ambient light, and then what we have
done is as we have added in the Ambient
| | 03:42 | Occlusion, which is shown here
on this Ambient Occlusion tab.
| | 03:45 | Ambient Occlusion then takes all of
that ambient flat lighting and subtracts or
| | 03:50 | adds or both, as you can see here,
the plain color of the ambient light based on
| | 03:57 | the geometry and the creases of where
the geometries intersect and either adds
| | 04:02 | to lightens or darkens the area in
order to compute the overall image.
| | 04:08 | So this is exactly what a severe
setting on a pedestal in a very indirect lit room
| | 04:14 | like in an art gallery or something
like that where they don't have direct lighting.
| | 04:17 | They use a lot of ambient light color.
| | 04:20 | So Ambient Occlusion has a couple
of settings I would like to go over.
| | 04:24 | The first is the number of Samples.
| | 04:26 | You can see a little bit of
graininess as you zoom in here.
| | 04:29 | You can see this grainy.
| | 04:30 | This graininess gets better
with the more Samples that you use.
| | 04:35 | 32 Samples is the most and the degree
to which the ambient lights falls off
| | 04:40 | is computed here.
| | 04:42 | The most intensive way of computing
ambient light is to use the Raytrace method.
| | 04:47 | But Blender also has an Approximate
Ambient Occlusion, which is much, much
| | 04:53 | faster to use, especially on
the lower powered computers.
| | 04:57 | So you can use a higher number of passes
and have a better correction with lower error
| | 05:02 | if you use Approximate Ambient Occlusion.
| | 05:05 | Normally, you use the ambient light
color set here, but you can also use the
| | 05:10 | SkyColor, which is this horizon light
green with up to a darker blue, to be used
| | 05:16 | so that it would almost look like this
globe is sitting outside under a tree,
| | 05:22 | let's say, under some very diffused lighting.
| | 05:24 | And you don't want to use Ambient
Occlusion as the only lighting, but combined
| | 05:29 | with all of the other lighting rigs
and the other kinds of lights, it can
| | 05:33 | provide very photorealistic lighting.
| | 05:36 | The next kind of lighting is called Radiosity.
| | 05:39 | Radiosity happens when light hits
something like say a red chair or in this case,
| | 05:45 | the pink base of the sphere.
| | 05:47 | Some of the light that hits that
sphere is radiated back out into the
| | 05:51 | environment and then that light hits
the object next to it and colors it next.
| | 05:57 | So if you take a bright red ball and
you roll it up against a white wall,
| | 06:01 | you will see that the wall turns a
little red and that's called Radiosity.
| | 06:05 | Radiosity is set here in this little
Radiosity buttons and basically you select
| | 06:11 | the meshes in the scene,
collect them and then go.
| | 06:16 | And what happens is Blender will go
through and based on the patch size, compute
| | 06:21 | how much each little section of the
scene is affected by the color that would be
| | 06:27 | radiated out from all the other
mesh sections in the whole scene.
| | 06:32 | So it takes a long time to compute, but
it gives a very accurate representation
| | 06:38 | of not just the light hitting something,
but the light then bouncing off and
| | 06:42 | reflecting and coloring
everything else in the scene.
| | 06:46 | So I have already recollected the
meshes and then this is the effect that
| | 06:50 | would be added.
| | 06:51 | Now again this is a very dramatic
effect. I really cranked it up so you
| | 06:54 | can visually see it.
| | 06:56 | Usually you crank it way down and make
it a very subtle addition to the light
| | 07:01 | to give the realism.
| | 07:03 | When you combine these two for example,
we have a combination of both Ambient
| | 07:08 | Occlusion and Radiosity, and you
can see how they kind of work
| | 07:12 | together to provide a very realistic
even amount of lighting even without any
| | 07:18 | lights in the scene.
| | 07:19 | This is actually with no actual light
being shown on the objects, and again,
| | 07:24 | the Radiosity is little strong
than what I would recommend.
| | 07:27 | But it gives you an idea of the kind
of effect you can get using Ambient
| | 07:31 | Occlusion and Radiosity.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Lighting with three-point and other multipoint lighting rigs| 00:00 | Now great lighting is a
combination of lighting techniques.
| | 00:03 | You get your Ambient Occlusion, the
Radiosity that we saw and then the
| | 00:07 | different kinds of lights.
| | 00:08 | And you combine these lights into what
we call rigs or lighting rigs, and they
| | 00:14 | are standard rigs that great light riggers use.
| | 00:17 | The first is the 1 pt light, which is
the simplest light to show and is usually
| | 00:22 | what's called a key light, because
it's the key light and it provides the
| | 00:25 | light into the scene.
| | 00:27 | This is a great example of what I would
call a 1 pt light, because it use only
| | 00:31 | one point of light to light the scene.
| | 00:34 | This is for example, if we were doing
to do our CG character on a stage and he
| | 00:38 | is the stand-up comic, there you go.
You would use this kind of a light to
| | 00:43 | provide a direct focus only on the
one object that's in the main light.
| | 00:48 | And the other objects or actors that
are on the fringe of the light, they won't
| | 00:52 | get the key light, and they won't
even be noticed by the audience.
| | 00:55 | So now if we take that concept and we
add on two lights, we would use like a
| | 01:01 | hemi-light on either side and this
lighting rig provides as you can see, there
| | 01:06 | is one on the left and one on the
right pointing directly at the object.
| | 01:10 | Nothing is pointing directly at
the object between the camera and the
| | 01:13 | object itself.
| | 01:15 | So these hemi-lights as you know they
don't provide any shadows, so it provides
| | 01:19 | a nice even illumination of the object
without any what's called a hot spot.
| | 01:24 | A hot spot is where you could get
some burnout and washout from the light.
| | 01:28 | If these two hemi-lights are evenly
balanced, they provide a nice even
| | 01:32 | balance lighting.
| | 01:33 | Let me get to the 3pt light, which
combines the key light and these two hemis or
| | 01:39 | other kinds of lights in the rig.
| | 01:41 | In this case, I have what's
called the 3pt Standard lighting rig.
| | 01:45 | This rig provides a key light that is
parented to the camera, a hemi-light on
| | 01:50 | the side to provide some fill light on
the side, and then a sunlight around back
| | 01:56 | shining back on the sphere to
provide what's called back lighting.
| | 02:00 | So you have a combination of side
fill lighting, key lighting, back
| | 02:04 | fill lighting.
| | 02:05 | So when you render this, you get the
kind of lighting situation you would have
| | 02:10 | if the actor or this setting was
outside in the sun with the sun on his back
| | 02:16 | shining down with a lot of
ambient light in the scene.
| | 02:20 | Now we can just rotate the sun like
that and now the sun is going to be in
| | 02:25 | his face and going to provide more
highlight to his face, but it's going to
| | 02:29 | add to the key light.
| | 02:30 | So what you have to do on these multi-
point rigs is to balance the lighting.
| | 02:35 | And in this case, I would probably want
to crank down the sunlight a little bit
| | 02:40 | to maybe 0.2 and even though it doesn't
show much in the preview, it's going to
| | 02:44 | light up the rig quite a bit, and
probably knock the key light down to about
| | 02:48 | 0.8, and now I'm not getting a
huge burnout area right here.
| | 02:52 | Now this sphere still does not have a
shader on it, there is still no real
| | 02:58 | big shading going on.
| | 02:59 | So we have used all the default settings,
there is still a lot of tweaking you
| | 03:03 | can do when we get into
the actual shader itself.
| | 03:06 | For the material this is
just setting up basic lighting.
| | 03:09 | If you have a good basic overall
balanced lighting scheme, then you don't run
| | 03:13 | into a lot of problems later on when
you are trying to set up the shaders.
| | 03:17 | Now when I film in the studio against a
green screen or just against a backdrop,
| | 03:21 | I'm not outside and I can't have any
light coming from behind the actors really,
| | 03:28 | although, the lights are
coming from stage lights.
| | 03:30 | And so this lighting rig has 3pt
lights but it has the two fill lights on the
| | 03:35 | side providing fill light, and then one
main key light coming on that's pretty
| | 03:40 | much offset from the camera that
provides a nice little direct but bright
| | 03:45 | focus light.
| | 03:47 | Now in the render, you can press J
and then compare the lighting that would
| | 03:49 | be from these two.
| | 03:51 | So as opposed to the other lighting
rig, which had the sunlight up here
| | 03:55 | shining down on top of the actor,
this is a very filled lit or front-lit
| | 03:59 | lighting rig that we would use.
| | 04:01 | You want to choose between these
two based on what you are filming.
| | 04:04 | If you find the image is distracting
by having this top light and you are
| | 04:10 | getting a lot of blow out on the top
side of the model, then you would want to
| | 04:14 | switch and use more of a balanced
lighting scheme like I'm showing here by
| | 04:18 | pressing the J key between these two renders.
| | 04:21 | The last point I would like to bring up
is a 4pt lighting rig and some lighting
| | 04:25 | rigs go up into 20 and 30 lights in
the scene based on what it is you want to
| | 04:29 | show and what you want to
draw the audiences attention to.
| | 04:33 | And this 4 rig consists of the two side
lights, a back light, and a key light.
| | 04:39 | I really like this rig, I think it
combines the best of all worlds, combines the
| | 04:44 | best of the standard 3pt lighting, the
best of the studio lighting, and provides
| | 04:48 | a great overall lighting.
| | 04:50 | Now these hemi-lights are
knocked down to only a 0.1 energy.
| | 04:54 | The key light is full strength, so it
provides a good crisp light that really
| | 05:00 | lights up all of the features.
| | 05:02 | But the sunlight is just a
very soft overhead light.
| | 05:05 | So I don't get a lot of
specularity on the tops of the models.
| | 05:09 | But yet I still get that impression
that there is lighting coming from
| | 05:12 | behind and back filling backside and
providing a nice general illumination
| | 05:17 | of the entire scene.
| | 05:18 | So there is an example of five different
kinds of lighting rigs that you can use
| | 05:22 | based on the kind of feeling that you
want to convey in your scene and what you
| | 05:27 | want to show and how well
you want everything to be lit.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding shadows| 00:00 | Shadows are very important in a scene,
because they help define what it is
| | 00:04 | you are looking at and then what you
are not looking at, and if you want to
| | 00:07 | hide something, you put in the shadows
and then you can have it dramatically
| | 00:11 | emerge from the shadows.
| | 00:12 | As well as shadows give a whole
sense of realism to the scene.
| | 00:17 | If you seek shadows being cast by
moving objects and everything, it just makes
| | 00:21 | that scene much more convincing.
| | 00:23 | In Blender there are four things
that need to happen in order for you to
| | 00:28 | get shadows.
| | 00:29 | The first thing is down
here in the Render sub-context.
| | 00:33 | In the Render panel there are two
render pipelines that need to be enabled.
| | 00:38 | The first is of course, Shadows.
| | 00:40 | You've got to have Shadow Pass enabled
if you are using Ray traced Shadows, you
| | 00:45 | need to have Ray tracing enabled
as part of the render pipeline.
| | 00:48 | So that's the first setting.
| | 00:50 | The second thing is you need a light.
| | 00:52 | You need a light to cast some shadows.
| | 00:54 | So if you look at the Shade Lamp
settings for a lamp like the sun lamp, you can
| | 00:59 | see that we have Ray Shadows turned on.
| | 01:01 | If this was turned off, this lamp
isn't going to cast any shadows.
| | 01:04 | It's going to light up Captain
Knowledge here, but it's going to cast a shadow
| | 01:08 | onto the ground plane.
| | 01:10 | So the shadow has to be enabled as well.
| | 01:12 | The third thing is you need something
to actually cast the shadow and it needs
| | 01:16 | to be detectable by Ray tracing.
| | 01:18 | So if look here at Captain Knowledge
and I take him off of being traceable by
| | 01:23 | Ray tracing, even when I render, even
though he is there and we can see him,
| | 01:28 | he is not casting a shadow because the
Ray tracing isn't picking up that he is
| | 01:31 | blocking the light.
| | 01:33 | So Traceable has to be on, and if any
of the lights that are using him to block
| | 01:39 | light are buffered lamps, then Shadow
Buffers have to be turned on as well.
| | 01:44 | Finally, in the Material setting we
have to have an Alpha setting of something
| | 01:48 | greater than 0, because if he is
perfectly transparent that light is going to
| | 01:52 | pass right through him and not be able
to cast a shadow, because there is no
| | 01:56 | light being blocked.
| | 01:57 | The fourth is that the material, the
ground plane in this case needs to be able
| | 02:01 | to receive the shadows.
| | 02:03 | And receiving the shadows is down here
in the Shaders panel and it has to be
| | 02:08 | detectable by Ray tracing.
| | 02:10 | Here under Shaders, the
Shadows button needs to be enabled.
| | 02:14 | And if we want transparent shadows to
be cast on to this material, then this
| | 02:19 | button needs to be enabled as well.
| | 02:21 | Now with all the lamps, the color of the
shadow is usually black, as you can see
| | 02:26 | here, but you can always
change the color of the shadow.
| | 02:30 | If I change the color of this shadow to
light green to reflect that there is a
| | 02:34 | lot of green light in the area, then
the intensity of that shadow would not be
| | 02:40 | nearly as distinct when it's
shown on to the ground plane.
| | 02:45 | It's going to be a lot less of a
shadow, as you can see it's not black.
| | 02:48 | It's sort of this off-colored gray,
because the colors are mixing.
| | 02:52 | The other thing that I have seen people
run into is if this hemisphere light or
| | 02:57 | other lights were shining directly
onto the ground plane and they were pretty
| | 03:02 | bright, they might wash out the shadow
as well and diminish the shadow to the
| | 03:07 | point sometimes where you wouldn't
even be able to see the shadow at all.
| | 03:11 | So if you are not getting good shadows,
first of all check all of these things
| | 03:15 | to make sure that you are using
shadows properly and that they add
| | 03:20 | convincingly to the scene.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. ShadingRealism overview| 00:00 | There are many areas to good shading.
| | 00:02 | This topic is on how do we make a
realistic material, or what I would prefer to
| | 00:07 | use is the term a believable material.
| | 00:10 | Because even if you're doing a
completely CG movie like big_buck_bunny, when
| | 00:14 | you look at this image you obviously
know it's not photorealistic but it's
| | 00:18 | believable.
| | 00:19 | You're brought into the image
and you're emotionally engaged.
| | 00:23 | That's the whole purpose of
realistic and good shading.
| | 00:27 | So Shading is a
combination of light that's in use.
| | 00:31 | Here we have an image that the light
is coming in through the window in the
| | 00:36 | back, and providing a lot of very
strong backlighting, but there isn't a lot
| | 00:39 | of ambient lighting going on, and
there is a lot of reflections and almost washouts.
| | 00:45 | But this is a believable image, even
though it's what I would consider to
| | 00:48 | be poorly lit.
| | 00:50 | Then we get into sunsets and sunrises,
there has been less than ideal lighting,
| | 00:55 | where we have the sun in back of the
mountains providing you just a beautiful
| | 01:00 | spectrum of light and shading, but the
cloud itself is really just gray, but
| | 01:05 | it's also being influenced by the color
and the light in the atmosphere etcetera
| | 01:10 | going on, as we saw in the sunlamp video.
| | 01:13 | The other thing I'll go into that
makes a scene believable is clutter.
| | 01:18 | In a lot of CG you're tempted just
to do one or two or three objects.
| | 01:22 | But you know in a realistic object,
this is the whole bunch of clutter in
| | 01:25 | the background.
| | 01:26 | Things that have accumulated
later in our houses over time.
| | 01:29 | Also, then there comes the texture of
the material and whatever is being shown.
| | 01:35 | Here the sky is a perfect flat shading
and nice blend of blue, but the water
| | 01:41 | itself here is all rippled, and the sand
as you can see is of full of footprints
| | 01:47 | and little pockmarks.
| | 01:49 | Next is then, what is the object made of?
| | 01:52 | Here is my car, my little weekend toy,
and it's made of fiberglass, but it's a
| | 01:58 | very smooth and very reflective surface.
| | 02:01 | So the rubber is very flat, and the
concrete is even flatter, but it's also a
| | 02:08 | scuffed up and scratched up.
| | 02:10 | The brick here is a wholly
different texture, and the wood is yet
| | 02:14 | another texture.
| | 02:15 | And then these plants, these plants
around are of different textures as well.
| | 02:19 | So everything has a texture to it, even
though a roof has a different speckling
| | 02:24 | approach, and that goes into
making a believable material as well.
| | 02:28 | You couldn't tell if this car was CG
or real, if it blends into and uses
| | 02:34 | textures and surface shading that is
appropriate and what you would expect to
| | 02:39 | see with this kind of vehicle
or with this kind of object.
| | 02:43 | The good news is even though there are
many, many things to consider, Blender
| | 02:48 | does offer a full set of controls for
rendering realistic and computer generated
| | 02:53 | believable materials.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a world in less than seven days| 00:00 | Setting up the background for your CG
world or your scene is pretty complicated,
| | 00:05 | and there are a few settings that we
need to go over and talk about when we
| | 00:08 | talking about setting up a world.
| | 00:10 | First, there is an entire sub-
context over here under Shading.
| | 00:14 | If you press F5 you get the Shading
context, and then down here with the little
| | 00:18 | World icon over on the
right is the World button.
| | 00:21 | So when you click that, you get a
whole set of panels that allow you to
| | 00:24 | setup the world.
| | 00:25 | So I'm going to go ahead and put these away.
| | 00:27 | Let's walk through them.
| | 00:28 | First of all, you have a control
for obviously naming the world.
| | 00:33 | So you can have different kinds of
worlds within the same blend file.
| | 00:36 | This particular world has
three colors that are setup.
| | 00:40 | One is the horizon color. The next is
the zenith color or the color that if you
| | 00:46 | go outside and you look straight up,
that's the color that you would see as you
| | 00:49 | stare out into space.
| | 00:51 | Then the third color is the color of
the ambient light that is in your scene.
| | 00:56 | So this is kind of a yellow color,
reflecting a nice yellow, warm, sunny day.
| | 01:03 | This scene has setup to be sort of at
the beach color, nice little pastel colors
| | 01:08 | with a beautiful clear day.
| | 01:10 | The ambient light color affects all of
the other objects in the scene as we saw
| | 01:14 | in the Ambient Occlusion and lighting video.
| | 01:17 | And these Exposure and Range settings
help you adjust the amount of light and
| | 01:23 | how it affects the overall tone of the image.
| | 01:27 | So up here in this Preview panel we
see the combination using a blend of
| | 01:32 | the horizon and zenith.
| | 01:33 | If we take blend off, then we get
just the horizon color as a flat
| | 01:37 | background color.
| | 01:38 | And if we press F12 now, here we
just have that flat black color.
| | 01:43 | If we Blend it, now we blend from the
bottom of the image to the top color, and
| | 01:49 | I'm going to go ahead and set this
top color a little darker or let's say a
| | 01:53 | little darker blue just so
you can see a little more.
| | 01:56 | Now however that's from the bottom of
the image, which assumes that the bottom
| | 02:00 | of the camera is looking out at the horizon.
| | 02:03 | If the camera is looking straight out
at the horizon, then we want to use the
| | 02:07 | Real option, which sets the middle of
the image to be the horizon color and then
| | 02:13 | above to be the zenith color and then
also down below to be the zenith color.
| | 02:18 | Paper extenuates the shading by
providing an absolute gradient from top to
| | 02:24 | bottom no matter what the camera is looking at.
| | 02:26 | So those are your three options that
can be used in combination to define where
| | 02:31 | and how you want your
background colors to merge.
| | 02:35 | The next panel is the Mist and the Stars.
| | 02:39 | The Mist, if you enable Mist, now as
objects recede often to the distance, they
| | 02:44 | will actually fade out to the horizon color.
| | 02:47 | This is used to simulate a kind of
effect that goes in the real world as
| | 02:52 | things fade out often to the distance
just, because there is mist and moisture
| | 02:55 | in the air.
| | 02:56 | Now you can get pretty fancy with
these settings to actually simulate a very
| | 03:00 | foggy kind of environment by setting a
Height here, and setting up a Distance
| | 03:05 | for the fade off to effect and then
Distance from the camera for the misting
| | 03:10 | effect to start taking the place.
| | 03:12 | So to simulate a thin mist, you would
specify a pretty far starting distance and
| | 03:18 | with a long falloff.
| | 03:20 | Stars brings up stars.
| | 03:22 | Put the stars in the
background just as you see here.
| | 03:25 | You can have different colored stars as
you can see here, and you would use this
| | 03:30 | to set up, let's say, a real environment
where you are trying to simulate a very
| | 03:36 | clear open sky or if you are doing a
space battle out in space, you can just
| | 03:40 | quickly setup the stars control the
size of the stars, how dense the stars are,
| | 03:45 | how close they are to one another and like that.
| | 03:48 | The next is the Ambient Occlusion
and there is a whole another section on
| | 03:52 | Ambient Occlusion, but this is where
you setup the different Ambient Occlusion
| | 03:55 | methods for computing the dirt
that collects in creases and corners.
| | 04:00 | Last up is the Texture and as we have
seen almost anything in Blender can be
| | 04:05 | Textured to give it a little bit of
variation as you can see here with the
| | 04:09 | Blend, this is a perfect color and
there is a never ever a perfect color.
| | 04:13 | You can add Cloud textures and like
that in addition you can also add what's
| | 04:17 | called Angular maps or Spherical maps.
| | 04:20 | An Angular map is a very
special kind of image that is used.
| | 04:24 | So let's go ahead and add one of those.
| | 04:26 | I'll give you an example of one.
| | 04:28 | Once you would add a new texture you
then have to come over here to the Textures
| | 04:32 | panel and define what that texture is.
| | 04:35 | Whether it's a Cloud, or Procedural
or an Image or an Environmental map.
| | 04:39 | In this case we are going to use an
Image and when you click on Image you get
| | 04:43 | all of this standard image controls.
| | 04:45 | So let's go ahead and load up
the Angular map from the library.
| | 04:48 | We click Load and then one of our
Windows will change to a file browser.
| | 04:53 | I would like you to get used to using a library.
| | 04:56 | So under library we have
textures that are separate from images.
| | 05:00 | Images to me are images of real
people or places or things, textures are a
| | 05:04 | special picture that is used to add
color or affect the surface in someway.
| | 05:10 | So once we have loaded it up, we can
see a preview in the Preview panel and as
| | 05:14 | you can see this is a round picture that
is rendered as if you were looking at a
| | 05:19 | perfectly reflective sphere.
| | 05:22 | And I take this one from Madcow.
| | 05:24 | This is a shoutout to Madcow in
England who provides a whole bunch of
| | 05:28 | these blenderartists.org.
| | 05:29 | You can go out and grab them and use
them to provide a very realistic world.
| | 05:34 | So now if we click Real and
Angular map, we can now map this image to
| | 05:39 | the horizon.
| | 05:40 | We don't need to really Blend it in with
the background blue, but we can, we can
| | 05:44 | use this blending to affect the sky color.
| | 05:47 | Now when we do our render, we have
a very photorealistic background for
| | 05:52 | our composite.
| | 05:53 | Let me go ahead and take off the stars,
because I don't think we'll have the
| | 05:57 | stars in the background and
there is no mist in this picture.
| | 06:00 | So now when we do our render, we have
our cube but now we have it set to into
| | 06:06 | this background and as long as we
match the lighting that was apparent in
| | 06:09 | this angular map, we'll be able to
blend in this cube into this scene so that
| | 06:15 | it looks like it fits.
| | 06:17 | There is other kind of mapping.
| | 06:18 | There is a Spherical/Angular map,
there is also a Tube-based mapping where
| | 06:22 | if you can have a tube type of
projection map, you can use that as the image
| | 06:26 | background.
| | 06:27 | So between the colors, the ambient
light colors, and the textures, Blender
| | 06:32 | provides a large array of
settings just for the world background.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying ambient occlusion| 00:00 | So when light is bounced around and
reflected and radiated and all that,
| | 00:04 | a phenomenon called Ambient Occlusion can
be used to simulate the darkening that
| | 00:08 | happens in corners, cracks, and crevices.
| | 00:11 | Mainly that ambient light is blocked.
| | 00:14 | So in this file, I've set up a
very simple AO scene setting that will
| | 00:17 | demonstrate the different kinds of
Ambient Occlusion that Blender has and we can
| | 00:21 | teach you how to use each of them.
| | 00:23 | First of all, the Ambient
Occlusion needs to be enabled.
| | 00:25 | It's not enabled by default,
because it does take a quite a bit of time
| | 00:29 | to calculate.
| | 00:30 | The amount of time it takes to
calculate depends on the quality that you want,
| | 00:33 | and the highest quality you
can render in is 32 samples.
| | 00:37 | But you can knock this all the
way down to 10 samples, if you want.
| | 00:40 | It just results in a faster,
but lower quality image.
| | 00:44 | For your final render, you can always
crank it back up again and then let it run
| | 00:48 | overnight, if you need to.
| | 00:50 | So here we have a test scene, and as
you can see the Ambient Occlusion has
| | 00:53 | darkened everything in the corners
and underneath the globe and like that.
| | 00:57 | To simulate what would happen when the
ambient light color, which is over here
| | 01:00 | in your Ambient Red, Green, and Blue
slider settings, is occluded from lighting
| | 01:05 | up the rest of the area in a
very perfect uniform manner.
| | 01:09 | Now there are two
approaches to Ambient Occlusion.
| | 01:12 | There is this Raytrace method, which
takes quite a bit of time and then there
| | 01:15 | is an approximate method, which is
much faster, but not quite as physically accurate.
| | 01:23 | As you can see, it gives much
different results, but much higher quality
| | 01:27 | results, as well with a
very few number of passes.
| | 01:31 | These settings down here allow you to
just only add Ambient Occlusion color
| | 01:36 | to the scene.
| | 01:37 | Now as you can see this gives a very
soft feeling or if you just enable Sub to
| | 01:44 | subtract, then as you press J here,
you can jump between the Add and the Sub.
| | 01:50 | So the Sub takes away the color, the
Add adds color to it and both of them
| | 01:55 | together then provide a
much more dramatic color.
| | 01:58 | Now when you click Plain here,
plain is this plain ambient color.
| | 02:02 | If you have a blend of colors in the
sky or even an Angular sky map, then by
| | 02:09 | clicking the Sky Color, the Ambient
Occlusion shader tries to use the color of
| | 02:14 | the sky to be the colors that
are added and/or subtracted.
| | 02:18 | So now you can see that now the sky
color blue has been added and subtracted
| | 02:24 | into this image to make it
a shaded and tinted blue.
| | 02:28 | Now the amount that this object is
affected by the ambient light is set in the
| | 02:33 | individual objects Shader settings.
| | 02:36 | Right here it's ambient is 0.5.
| | 02:37 | That's a pretty large the setting on average.
| | 02:41 | I like to use 0.1.
| | 02:44 | Then use an actual color that
I think this environment has.
| | 02:49 | So if we come over here and back to
our Shader settings, notice I'm using a
| | 02:53 | fairly bright white yellowish kind of
color to be an outdoor kind of scene.
| | 02:58 | The other way you can do that is if
you leave that default at 0.5, then you
| | 03:01 | can just set this to a pretty dark
medium shade of gray and everything comes
| | 03:07 | out about the same.
| | 03:10 | Lastly, the Energy control
affects the overall impact.
| | 03:14 | It's sort of like a multiplier, if you will.
| | 03:16 | So if everything is getting too affected
by the ambient light and you don't want
| | 03:21 | to change the ambient light color.
| | 03:23 | You can just crank the Energy down or
if you want to amplify the effect of AO,
| | 03:28 | then put it above 1 just say something like 2.
| | 03:31 | As a final note, I'd like to say that
some people love Ambient Occlusions.
| | 03:35 | Other people call it a cop-out for
compensating for really bad lighting.
| | 03:40 | I like to say that Ambient Occlusion
is an aid toward making photorealistic
| | 03:44 | renderings with Blender.
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| Working with basic materials| 00:00 | The first step to a convincing surface
is a base color and some kind of material
| | 00:04 | that gives it a feeling of depth and substance.
| | 00:07 | The purpose of this video is to go over
all of the basic material settings and
| | 00:10 | the basic options that you have.
| | 00:12 | First of all, we've Captain
Knowledge and he is one mesh but he has many
| | 00:17 | different colors assigned to him.
| | 00:18 | So that's the first thing you need to
know is that each mesh can have many
| | 00:22 | different materials.
| | 00:23 | To see what those materials are, we
come over here to the Link and Materials
| | 00:27 | settings under the Editing Context and
over here we see the different materials
| | 00:32 | that make up and are used
to color Captain Knowledge.
| | 00:37 | If we tab into Edit Mode and we select
the face, we can see that Blender shows
| | 00:42 | us the material that is
assigned to that particular face.
| | 00:46 | So we've his face here and we've that
his lips are assigned to the wrong color.
| | 00:50 | So if we go ahead and Shift+Select
those three faces that have the wrong color
| | 00:55 | and then Shift+Select one that does
have the right color and then come over
| | 00:58 | here and click Assign.
| | 01:00 | We have now changed the assignment
of those faces to be this flesh color.
| | 01:04 | So now his lips are split and thinner on top.
| | 01:08 | But what defines this flesh color?
| | 01:11 | Well, that's under here under
Shading and Material buttons.
| | 01:15 | We've a whole bunch of different panels
that have a ton of different options for
| | 01:20 | setting up the basic materials.
| | 01:22 | Here in the Material panel,
we've a couple of different options.
| | 01:25 | One is to mark a material Shadeless or
what's called Self Illuminating inside
| | 01:30 | Max and we often do that when we're
using a picture of a real world place.
| | 01:34 | The No Mist setting here excludes this
material from that mist that we've talked
| | 01:38 | about in the world settings.
| | 01:40 | And here is where you set the
basic base color of the mesh.
| | 01:45 | So when we click on Color here, now
these sliders are updated to reflect the RGB
| | 01:50 | values of this actual color over here.
| | 01:53 | A very important but often overlooked
slider down here is A, simply marked A
| | 01:58 | which is the Alpha Channel of any
color and you use this to make an object
| | 02:02 | semitransparent or completely
transparent or when it's at 1, completely opaque.
| | 02:08 | Now there are three colors
that we set here, the base color.
| | 02:11 | The specular color is when you look
at something and it has a shine to it.
| | 02:16 | What color is that shine?
| | 02:17 | That's called the specular color.
| | 02:19 | And then if it reflects something back
at you when you look like in a mirror,
| | 02:23 | you usually reflect back the perfect
light to reflect the perfect color.
| | 02:27 | But you can have colored mirrors as well.
| | 02:29 | These little balls that are in the
yard sometimes that you see in Arizona
| | 02:32 | and like that.
| | 02:33 | They are often colored blue or green or
something like that and you can set the
| | 02:37 | mirror color here as well.
| | 02:39 | Now any of these colors, the color, the
base color, which is called the diffuse
| | 02:43 | color and the specular color,
they don't have to be a single color.
| | 02:46 | You can use the Color Ramps here and
expand this panel to show you that if
| | 02:51 | you enable color bands for the diffuse
color, now instead of just being this
| | 02:56 | one color, the diffuse color will be
a range of colors and this range is
| | 03:01 | based on some input.
| | 03:02 | You could use the amount of Energy
that the material is getting based on
| | 03:07 | the light source.
| | 03:09 | And then mix that according to some
factor into the base color to provide a
| | 03:13 | better range of colors.
| | 03:15 | So that's the basic diffuse setting and
the basic material options that you have
| | 03:20 | for setting up the basic color inside Blender.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with node materials| 00:00 | In addition to setting up your
material settings over here in the Shading
| | 00:04 | Context, Blender offers a
node based material editor.
| | 00:08 | To start that, we just click here over
under Nodes and then we've to use one of
| | 00:13 | the windows as a Node Editor.
| | 00:15 | This is the first time we've seen
this in the course and this is a big old
| | 00:19 | spreadsheet that you can use to
construct a virtual network of nodes, just like
| | 00:24 | when you're doing a project plan and you
construct a network chart of all tasks.
| | 00:28 | Well that's the same idea that nodes are.
| | 00:30 | The first thing we want to do is to
click this ball here, which says that this
| | 00:34 | Node Editor is going to be
used to edit a Material Node.
| | 00:38 | We want to Use Nodes and this is the
Node Material NT that we're going to be
| | 00:43 | editing called Material.
| | 00:44 | We can call it something else.
| | 00:45 | Let's call it CloudyBar.
| | 00:47 | That's the way you can name your node
based materials so that they're saved in
| | 00:53 | the file and you can
readily identify them later on.
| | 00:56 | The first node we want to
add is the Material node.
| | 01:00 | This controls the basic
settings for the material.
| | 01:04 | By default it's shades of gray.
| | 01:06 | So now if we press F12 instead of
getting the red bar we now get the gray bar.
| | 01:11 | Now let's modify this color using another node.
| | 01:14 | So we've a whole bunch of different
nodes that do different things to the color
| | 01:19 | and then they pass it on to the next
node, until finally it reaches the output.
| | 01:23 | So the RGB Curves node is a little
color processor that can adjust the
| | 01:28 | different colors.
| | 01:29 | So let's say this is the red channel.
| | 01:33 | So for little parts of red,
I'm going to boost the red.
| | 01:37 | So this is kind of a red booster right here.
| | 01:39 | And if we go ahead and thread this
RGB Curve by pressing just Space and Add
| | 01:44 | the Output node.
| | 01:46 | Because the RGB Curve was already
selected, Blender automatically threads the
| | 01:50 | nodes together for us in a nice little chain.
| | 01:53 | So now we've a pink bar because
we've boosted the reds from the gray and
| | 01:57 | routed that to the output.
| | 01:59 | We can also mix in textures into the
color by adding a Texture Input node and
| | 02:06 | selecting a Texture.
| | 02:07 | In this case, I've defined a Cloud texture.
| | 02:10 | So let's mix that into the pink color
by using the Mix node, which is also
| | 02:15 | in the Color section.
| | 02:16 | Now what we're going to do is use this
Cloud color to route the value to the
| | 02:20 | Mix node, so this value now tells this
Mix node where to mix between these two colors.
| | 02:28 | So we'll use the original color and
let's give it a blue color to choose from.
| | 02:34 | Now when we route this to the Color
Output, we've a material that mixes between
| | 02:40 | a pink and a blue
according to this cloud texture.
| | 02:45 | As you can see these node trees or
these noodles like I like to call them can
| | 02:50 | get pretty long and complex.
| | 02:51 | But you basically just keep stringing
them together, modifying the material
| | 02:56 | color as you go according to whatever
vector and geometry and how you want to
| | 03:01 | apply or map these colors to reach
other based on either, for example, here on
| | 03:06 | the Input, we've the Geometry of the scene.
| | 03:09 | The Camera Data, you can even change
colors based on how far that object is
| | 03:15 | from the camera.
| | 03:16 | So things can get like red hot as
they get really close end to the camera
| | 03:20 | or whatever.
| | 03:21 | You can set your own RGB values
and of course, use those textures.
| | 03:26 | What you can do with those then is then
mix them or adjust them, Invert them or
| | 03:32 | play with the Hue Saturation and Value.
| | 03:34 | You can also map them to different
aspects of the geometry or the situation and
| | 03:39 | use Ramps, convert them to Black
and White and also do Math on them.
| | 03:44 | This is especially useful
when you're mapping camera data.
| | 03:47 | Ultimately, you can create groups of
nodes so that if you come up with a good
| | 03:52 | noodle that you like, like this one here,
if you want to reuse it you can just
| | 03:55 | define these as a group by pressing,
for example B and highlighting these nodes
| | 04:01 | that you want to group and then Node >
Make Group and then that makes this Node
| | 04:06 | group into something that can be
reused and imported in other situations.
| | 04:12 | And also just simplifies the whole
display of the noodles inside your
| | 04:17 | Node Editor window.
| | 04:19 | So that's a brief rundown on how to use
nodes to create a material, instead of
| | 04:24 | using the traditional material panels.
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| Applying Pipeline options| 00:00 | When you press F12 and you're asking
Blender to make a render of your CG scene,
| | 00:05 | a couple of major computing elements
come into play as it looks at each object
| | 00:10 | and each surface to be rendered, and
each of those computing elements are
| | 00:14 | controlled over here in the Render
Pipeline panel under your Links and Pipeline
| | 00:18 | inside the Material Shading
for that particular object.
| | 00:23 | Now instead of a flat surface, you
can have the object rendered as halos.
| | 00:27 | Halos are basically blobs of light and
we've a whole another tutorial on that.
| | 00:31 | ZTransparent enables the renderer
to see through this object into other
| | 00:37 | objects that are behind it.
| | 00:39 | And that's used in
conjunction with this Alpha slider here.
| | 00:42 | Alpha controls the transparency or
opaqueness of an object and how much it
| | 00:48 | occludes other objects that are behind it.
| | 00:50 | So if we crank this down and press F12,
we can see Suzanne is hiding up behind
| | 00:56 | the block and now this block is
essentially a very simple cube of glass.
| | 01:03 | Full OSA enables full over sampling and
anti-aliasing which is used for making
| | 01:09 | sure that this object really
blends into the other objects around it.
| | 01:13 | That you don't get any sharp jaggies
if there is a lot of sharp right angles.
| | 01:18 | Wire instead of rendering the surface
as a smooth, solid, shaded surface, now
| | 01:25 | the faces aren't rendered but only the
edges are rendered as almost as if it
| | 01:28 | was made out of wire.
| | 01:31 | Radiosity tells Blender to let this
object radiate light back out into the
| | 01:36 | environment, if you're doing radiosity
calculations and using the whole radiosity
| | 01:41 | engine that's built into Blender.
| | 01:43 | OnlyCast says that this object shouldn't
be rendered but that its shadow should.
| | 01:49 | So now you can see Suzanne with her
shadow as well as the shadow of the box,
| | 01:54 | but not the box itself.
| | 01:56 | This is one of those tricky little
things that you use a lot of times when
| | 02:00 | you are compositing let's say somebody's
different shadow or different colored
| | 02:05 | shadow or a different shape of a shadow.
| | 02:07 | I'm often reminded of that great Star
Wars poster where Anakin's shadow is
| | 02:12 | actually that of Darth Vader and that
was done by only casting the shadow of
| | 02:17 | Darth Vader and substituting
that in for his regular shadow.
| | 02:21 | Traceable makes this object traceable by
ray tracing, which if you are using ray
| | 02:26 | traced objects in your
scene is pretty essential.
| | 02:29 | And Shadow Buffer enables the material
to be lit and have shadows cast from it
| | 02:35 | by using Shadow Buffer lamps and
we've talked about ray traced shadows and
| | 02:40 | shadow buffer lamps under the lighting chapter.
| | 02:43 | So that's a quick rundown of the major
components in which an object can appear
| | 02:48 | and be rendered within Blender.
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| Painting vertices| 00:00 | In addition to normal material
shading, Blender offers a Vertex painting,
| | 00:05 | which is a painting method that is
used where each vertex of the mesh is
| | 00:09 | assigned a separate color.
| | 00:11 | To enter a Vertex color painting, you
first have to tell Blender in the Material
| | 00:16 | Settings for that particular object,
in this case the butterfly wing, that we
| | 00:20 | want to paint it and then we
enter Vertex Painting Mode.
| | 00:25 | When we do that over here in the
Editing panel, we have a couple of things
| | 00:29 | that change.
| | 00:30 | One is in the Mesh panel here under
Vertex Color, we have a Vertex Color layer
| | 00:36 | and we now have a Paint panel when we
are in the Vertex Paint Mode that gives us
| | 00:41 | fine control over our paintbrush.
| | 00:43 | If we press N we get a Paint Properties
panel that pops up and I have one down
| | 00:49 | here in this window here.
| | 00:50 | That allows us to rapidly
change our color that we're using.
| | 00:55 | So now all you'd need to do
is just paint in the colors.
| | 00:58 | In this case, we're going to make the
butterfly have a little pretty red edge
| | 01:02 | to, a beautiful blue in the background.
| | 01:04 | Since I'm painting the Vertex colors, I
need to have enough vertices to paint.
| | 01:11 | So sometimes you might have to add a
Multires level to your objects so that you
| | 01:16 | create more virtual, more real
vertices that you can then paint on.
| | 01:21 | So now I'm just going to paint the back
a little bit here and since I can spin
| | 01:26 | the model around, this is really just
like painting in 3D as if I had the model
| | 01:30 | here and I had a little Airbrush.
| | 01:32 | Speaking of Airbrush, that's the
Spray control over here that's enabled.
| | 01:36 | That keeps applying the paint
as long as I keep the mouse down.
| | 01:40 | In addition, I have a Vertex Swatch here.
| | 01:42 | So just by clicking the swatch, I can
click the Eyedropper Sampler and perhaps
| | 01:47 | sample, if I had over here a UV image
of a real butterfly, I could be sampling
| | 01:51 | real butterfly colors and
painting them in real time over here.
| | 01:55 | Otherwise, I can use these RGB
sliders to set whatever color I want.
| | 01:59 | The other control is the Opacity control,
which controls how thick the paint is
| | 02:05 | and the size of the brush that I'm using.
| | 02:07 | I can yield from a very
broad brush to a very fine brush.
| | 02:12 | You can pick up the colors
and we'd use them in painting.
| | 02:20 | In addition to mixing the whatever
color of my brush with whatever existing
| | 02:25 | color there is, I can instead set the
Mix most to Add where this color adds on
| | 02:30 | to whatever existing color is there and
that provides little bright highlights.
| | 02:35 | I can Subtract which
actually darkens the colors.
| | 02:38 | I can Multiply or Blur the colors
together in which case now, my brush access a
| | 02:43 | blending brush to blend these colors
together into a nice smooth gradient.
| | 02:47 | I can also provide on the fly,
Multiplying and Gamma correction to my colors,
| | 02:54 | just by clicking the Set button there,
and that lightens up all of these colors
| | 02:58 | to make a very happy pastel
kind of colored butterfly.
| | 03:02 | And that's a quicker review of Vertex
painting in Blender that allows you to
| | 03:06 | provide much finer control and more
of an artistic paintbrush feel to you
| | 03:11 | models in Blender.
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| Using shaders| 00:00 | When you ask Blender to make a render
of an image, it uses what's called the
| | 00:04 | shaders to compute what
every surface should look like.
| | 00:08 | So let's go ahead and press F12, for
those of you on the PC, or for those of you
| | 00:15 | on the Mac, if F12 is remapped to a
widget, then come over here to the Scene
| | 00:20 | Context and click the Render button and
that generates a render and places the
| | 00:25 | resulting image over here
in this UV/Image Editor.
| | 00:29 | And in this sample setup we have
the sphere, which is lit by two lamps.
| | 00:34 | A soft Hemi lamp which is shining on
the globe here which you can kind of see
| | 00:38 | through this white color and then a very
bright piercing light above it which is
| | 00:42 | an omnidirectional light.
| | 00:44 | As you can see, the surface of the
sphere goes from a purple color to this
| | 00:49 | white color here and this white color
and purple color is set over here in your
| | 00:54 | diffuse and your specular colors in
the Material panel, under the Shading
| | 01:00 |
| | 01:00 | Material context.
| | 01:02 | Now the amount of the color and where
this specular starts and where it ends is
| | 01:07 | all setup in the Shaders panel, which
is the main purpose of this tutorial.
| | 01:12 | We have five different shaders to
choose from and each of these is usually
| | 01:18 | generated by a different guy or a
different person that was working on this math
| | 01:22 | to come up with different algorithm for
computing the surface and we are going
| | 01:26 | to run through them.
| | 01:27 | For the Lambert Shader, which is the
normal shader that's used, the one control
| | 01:31 | you have is the amount of reflection
of the color that occurs when the object
| | 01:37 | is hit by light.
| | 01:38 | So a lesser reflection means that the
sphere up here is darker or deeper or
| | 01:45 | richer kind of a color.
| | 01:46 | The Specularity refers to the amount of
specular color that is reflected as the
| | 01:52 | light hits a sphere.
| | 01:54 | So now, a little bit of light hitting
the sphere results in a lot of specular
| | 02:00 | color being blended in.
| | 02:01 | The Hardness refers to the
diameter of this specular reflection.
| | 02:06 | A larger number increases the hardness,
which actually diminishes the size of
| | 02:13 | that spherical reflection.
| | 02:15 | Usually, things have very little
specularity and very little hardness.
| | 02:22 | Usually things are like
cardboard or soundproofing or paper.
| | 02:27 | They really spread the light over a
very broad area and if all of your stuff
| | 02:31 | is looking like plastic, it's
because you have the specularity and the
| | 02:35 | hardness up way too high.
| | 02:38 | Also it could be depend on the
kind of lamp you are using too.
| | 02:41 | This Hemi lamp provides a nice
base, even amount of lighting.
| | 02:45 | The omnidirectional is very
hard point source of light.
| | 02:49 | The other shader is the Oren-Nayar shader.
| | 02:52 | That algorithm is designed to
reflect some roughness in the surface.
| | 02:57 | At the microscopic level,
the lamplight is diffused.
| | 03:02 | So I'm going to go ahead and change
the lamp, to be a Spot lamp to better
| | 03:06 | illustrate this point.
| | 03:08 | Now even though the Spot lamp is
shining directly on the sphere, you are not
| | 03:12 | getting a very hard, crisp, specular reflection.
| | 03:16 | You are instead getting a very rough
surface as though this was made out
| | 03:22 | of rough sandpaper.
| | 03:23 | The Toon shader goes with the toon
specular shader and we are just going to go
| | 03:27 | ahead and jump into the
different specular shader here.
| | 03:30 | And this Toon shader was developed to
enable Blender to provide cartoon style
| | 03:35 | renderings from 3D objects that
look as though they were cel-shaded.
| | 03:40 | The Toon shader has a couple
of different other controls.
| | 03:44 | One of which is how much color is
reflected, which is common pretty much
| | 03:48 | throughout of all of the different shaders.
| | 03:51 | The size of the diffuse area and the
smoothness of the transition from the
| | 03:58 | diffuse to the specular.
| | 03:59 | So just making those few changes, you
can see that the specular and the diffuse
| | 04:04 | settings and appearance is very different.
| | 04:08 | By increasing the Specularity,
increasing the Smoothness, we are now getting
| | 04:13 | this very odd kind of color.
| | 04:16 | Most cel-shading uses a very sharp line
between the diffuse and specular and so
| | 04:21 | you get this kind of an effect.
| | 04:25 | This provides a smaller
smoothness setting on the diffuse.
| | 04:29 | It says that there is less of a
shading gradient among the different areas of
| | 04:36 | the sphere that are getting
the different light amounts.
| | 04:40 | The Fresnel effect is a pretty wild effect.
| | 04:43 | I'll go ahead and switch
this back to the CookTorrance.
| | 04:46 | The Fresnel effect is used a lot on
glass materials and that provides a very
| | 04:52 | neat, magnifying kind of effect.
| | 04:55 | As the light hits the surface,
it's spread out and reflected back.
| | 05:01 | The Minnaert shader is very
good for metal type of surfaces.
| | 05:05 | If you want something to look like
it's a painted metal, then you can use
| | 05:07 | the Minnaert.
| | 05:08 | The Tangent Vector, sort of flips the
effect so that instead of getting a normal
| | 05:15 | shading, you get a tangent shading and
the closest way I can explain this is
| | 05:20 | Christmas balls that are wrapped with
very fine like metal string when they are
| | 05:25 | hung on the tree, you get this kind
of banding kind of effect going on.
| | 05:29 | Shadows, we have talked about, is that
this material can have shadows cast on to
| | 05:34 | it and if it does receive shadows from
a transparent object, then the coloring
| | 05:41 | and the effect on this object from
that shadow is based on the Alpha channel.
| | 05:47 | We can have this object render its
shadow on a material as an Alpha value and
| | 05:52 | that helps us when we are
blending shadows together.
| | 05:54 | Cubic uses a faster fall-off, so if
we are using a Lambert shader, and no
| | 06:00 | Tangent, then this Cubic helps ease
this fall-off that occurs when one light
| | 06:06 | source blends in with another one.
| | 06:08 | Down here under Translucency if we
increase the Translucency and we make the
| | 06:13 | material slightly transparent, then as
the light goes through the front part of
| | 06:19 | the material, it's going to hit the
backside of the material and then reflect
| | 06:24 | back out through the front side of the material.
| | 06:26 | So the Translucency helps
simulate what happens with a real globe.
| | 06:31 | Let's say as light enters into
the globe, it gets bounced around on
| | 06:35 | the backside.
| | 06:36 | Here you can see this purple and then
comes back out though the front side
| | 06:40 | for us to see.
| | 06:41 | Ambient light we have talked about
before is the amount that this material as
| | 06:44 | effected by the ambient light and
Emitting is used with radiosity to say that
| | 06:50 | this almost is lit up.
| | 06:52 | So now we have a glass globe that is
lit and actually cast soft light out into
| | 06:57 | the rest of the environment.
| | 06:59 | I'm going to turn this down.
| | 07:01 | And lastly but not least, the LBias
helps with the shadow buffer lamps and
| | 07:05 | makes them darker.
| | 07:06 | A lot of times a shadow buffer lamp
will cast kind of a general gray kind of a
| | 07:12 | shadow and not really a crisp dark
shadow and LBias helps define this shadow
| | 07:19 | better from a shadow buffer lamp.
| | 07:21 | So that's real brief overview of the
five different kinds of diffuse shaders, a
| | 07:25 | little bit on the specular shaders.
| | 07:27 | The Phong shader is used for like the
surface of pitches and fuzzy things.
| | 07:32 | Faces are good for Phong
shading and things like that.
| | 07:35 | Wardiso is a specular shader
that also is good for metal as well.
| | 07:43 | So play with the different shaders and
experiment to see what kind of effect
| | 07:47 | they give under the various different
kind of lighting conditions so that you
| | 07:51 | come up with a great combination that
gives the shading across the surface of
| | 07:56 | the material that you want to use.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using mirrors| 00:00 | In this video we're going to cover
reflectivity in Blender or what's known
| | 00:04 | as mirroring.
| | 00:05 | So, first let's render this scene by
pressing F12 for Windows users, for Mac
| | 00:09 | users come over to the Scene Render
Context and click the big Render button
| | 00:15 | in the Render panel.
| | 00:17 | Then switch back to the Material
settings to expose the Ray and Mirror
| | 00:22 | Transparency settings that we're
going to go over in this tutorial.
| | 00:25 | In this file, I've set up some basic
mirror settings and we're going to explore
| | 00:29 | mirrors a little bit, as well as
mirrors in combination with transparency.
| | 00:35 | First of all, I need to remind you
that in order for any of this to work
| | 00:39 | you need to enable Ray Tracing as part of
the scene Render settings and now let's go
| | 00:44 | through each material in order.
| | 00:47 | First, we have the monkey here, Suzanne.
| | 00:50 | She's reclining on the cube.
| | 00:52 | Notice that she is fully opaque
and she's not transparent and she's
| | 00:56 | not reflective.
| | 00:58 | That means she's only going to be
able to reflect the light around her.
| | 01:02 | But she is pretty specular.
| | 01:03 | So she's not going to reflect the
image of what's bouncing around, but
| | 01:07 | she's just going to reflect the light itself.
| | 01:09 | Now, the cube that she's on is
reflective and Ray Mirror is set on and let's run
| | 01:16 | through these
reflectivity settings a little bit.
| | 01:18 | First of all you can
control the amount of Mirroring.
| | 01:21 | Not everything is a perfect mirror.
| | 01:23 | Some things like glass, plastics.
| | 01:26 | They will reflect sort of the
reflection, but not all of the reflection.
| | 01:30 | So you can control the amount or
the degree of reflectivity here.
| | 01:35 | Lastly, when things reflect something,
very often the reflective surface is
| | 01:40 | inside the surface or in back of the
surface, like a back surface mirror.
| | 01:44 | So as light passes through that medium
and gets bounced and then emitted back
| | 01:49 | out again, there's a Fresnel effect
that occurs and you can control that here
| | 01:54 | with these controls.
| | 01:55 | Lastly, the medium or the surface
that's actually doing the reflecting maybe
| | 02:00 | isn't perfectly flat and so there's a
little bit of a Gloss value here that
| | 02:06 | allows it to give kind of a blurry reflection.
| | 02:09 | Anisotropic reflections is kind of
a stretching along a tangent vector.
| | 02:15 | It's a kind of a way of, if you think of
extruded aluminum, very often you will
| | 02:19 | have anisotropic reflections.
| | 02:21 | Samples allows you to
control the number of samples.
| | 02:24 | So if you're doing just a draft kind of
a render, you can set the samples down here.
| | 02:30 | You'll get some spotting and some
speckling because you haven't adequately
| | 02:35 | sampled, but at least it's a lot faster.
| | 02:38 | So as light bounces around and it
bounces off all of these surfaces, you have to
| | 02:43 | sort of set a limit for the computer
in which to calculate the depth of the
| | 02:47 | number of times a light ray will come in,
hit the monkey, bounce off this,
| | 02:51 | bounce off, back off the lamp, back
off here and then come up to the camera.
| | 02:56 | And so four times is generally more than
adequate number of inter light reflections to set.
| | 03:02 | Finally, mirrors are never perfect and
as they recede off into the distance,
| | 03:08 | you get to see less and less of what it
is they have reflected back as they're
| | 03:12 | acting sort of like as a lens, and so
you can simulate that by setting up a
| | 03:17 | maximum distance and indicating whether
you want the mirror to eventually fade
| | 03:22 | out to sky color or to the color of
the material, as it recedes off into the distance.
| | 03:27 | So now we have different settings.
| | 03:29 | We have of course, this left wall,
which shows the use of the colored
| | 03:34 | material setting here in the Material
panel and I've colored this to be like
| | 03:39 | a yellow colored mirror.
| | 03:41 | You enable that by clicking here under
mirror and then setting the RGB sliders
| | 03:45 | or if you want to use Hue/Saturation
and Value, you can just click here to
| | 03:50 | activate the HSV sliders.
| | 03:53 | This mirror is fully opaque versus
this mirror over here on this other
| | 03:58 | backside, on the right side, is
actually transparent, as you can see the Alpha
| | 04:03 | is set down to 0.2.
| | 04:05 | And so what we see in the background
as blue is from the World settings down
| | 04:09 | here, where we set up these two colors
of blue to be a blend from the bottom of
| | 04:16 | the image up to the top.
| | 04:18 | So we're seeing, even though this is a
mirror that's partially reflecting the
| | 04:23 | Suzanne on the block,
| | 04:24 | it's also allowing the World
light to come back through as well.
| | 04:28 | So, this is a good example of
a good glass kind of surface.
| | 04:33 | So that's a quick wrap-up to using
mirrors in Blender and the different kinds of
| | 04:38 | options and features that
you have available to you.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with transparency| 00:00 | In this video we're going to cover
the two kinds of Transparency that
| | 00:03 | are handled in Blender.
| | 00:05 | So what I would like you to do first is
switch over to the transparency scene by
| | 00:09 | clicking on Transparence, and if you
press F12 to do the Render or Mac users
| | 00:16 | through the Scene Render button,
| | 00:18 | you should get this image of Susanne
inside this semi-transparent globe.
| | 00:23 | There's a couple of things to point out here.
| | 00:25 | Number one, let's look at the globe.
| | 00:27 | The globe has an Alpha value of 0.3.
| | 00:30 | You'll recall that 1 is fully
opaque and 0 is completely transparent.
| | 00:35 | So at 0.3 we can sort of see the
globe and it's shaded gray, with a red
| | 00:38 | specular color.
| | 00:39 | So as the light hits the glass, even
though it's colored gray, it picks up
| | 00:43 | some red coloring as the light travels
through the glass and comes back out to see us.
| | 00:48 | The main Ray Transparency settings are
down here under the Mirror Transparency
| | 00:52 | panel, and we have a couple of
controls that I'd like to go over.
| | 00:56 | One is the Index Refraction.
| | 00:57 | That's the amount of bending of the
light and the Fresnel Effect is kind of a
| | 01:03 | magnifying effect that happens
when light passes through bent glass.
| | 01:08 | So, let's go ahead and crank those
up, and now if we press F12 again.
| | 01:14 | Now, under Render you can see that the
image has been bent by passing through
| | 01:18 | the glass, reflecting off Susanne,
and then passing back out through this
| | 01:21 | rounded lens, so the glass is acting
sort of as a lens, and we can simulate
| | 01:26 | that in Blender.
| | 01:27 | Glossiness is the fact that no glass
or anything that light passes through is
| | 01:32 | perfectly transparent.
| | 01:34 | So as we crank down the Glossiness a
little bit, we can barely make out the
| | 01:40 | outline of Susanne through the glass.
| | 01:43 | We want to crank up the value, notice
we've got some speckling going on here,
| | 01:46 | and that's because not
enough samples are being taken.
| | 01:49 | So if we do crank down the Glossiness we
want to increase the number of samples.
| | 01:54 | It's going to take longer but it's
going to give you a higher quality result.
| | 01:58 | Now, when light passes through glass
and then passes through another piece of
| | 02:01 | glass and then comes back out again,
there's a lot of refraction going on, and
| | 02:05 | just like with mirrors there's a lot
of calculations that need to happen.
| | 02:09 | So this control allows you to set the
number of refractions that are going to be
| | 02:14 | computed and I find that 2 is plenty.
| | 02:16 | As light passes through something, some
of it's absorbed and then other parts of
| | 02:21 | it is reflected back out.
| | 02:22 | And you can control the absorption here,
as well as reduce the specularity on
| | 02:27 | transparent materials as the light
passes through, so you get less of this
| | 02:31 | red bloom.
| | 02:32 | Now Ray Transparency is
very physically accurate.
| | 02:34 | As you can see, we can
simulate any kind of material.
| | 02:38 | There's readily available tables for
the Index, or Refraction, for any kind of
| | 02:42 | material like glass, or water, or
diamonds, or quartz, anything like that.
| | 02:48 | The other kind of Transparency is called
ZTransparency, and that's right up here
| | 02:53 | under Z. And if we have the globe
selected and press Ztransparency, notice that
| | 02:58 | Ray Transparency comes off.
| | 03:00 | ZTransparency is very fast to
compute as you've seen here, but it's not
| | 03:05 | physically accurate at all.
| | 03:07 | There is no real control over the
bending of light as it passes through
| | 03:11 | the objects.
| | 03:12 | However, it is very fast.
| | 03:14 | The last thing when dealing with
Transparency is when you're rendering
| | 03:17 | a transparency.
| | 03:18 | Even though this card here is colored
gray with a red specularity, it's blue
| | 03:25 | in the image.
| | 03:26 | And the blue that it's picking up is
from the World settings, namely the Horizon
| | 03:30 | blended up to the Zenith.
| | 03:32 | So that's not too good because
that blue color may carry over in any
| | 03:37 | subsequent rendering.
| | 03:39 | So what we would want to do is
come to the Scene Render Settings and
| | 03:43 | click Premultiply.
| | 03:44 | Now when we render, when we drag over
the background area here, you can see in
| | 03:51 | the Image Editor the RGBA values,
expressed as both an 8-bit value and a
| | 03:57 | number between 0 and 1, along with the
Z value, distance from the camera for
| | 04:02 | every pixel in the image.
| | 04:04 | And here we can see that the
background has a value of 0.2 Alpha, as well as,
| | 04:09 | kind of a gray color.
| | 04:10 | We can now then composite this over
another background matte image and some of
| | 04:15 | the matte colors will come through and
it'll be looking like we're through kind
| | 04:19 | of a dark glass or smoky colored window.
| | 04:22 | So those are the two approaches to
handling Transparency in Blender.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using halos| 00:00 | In this video, we're going to talk about
converting a mesh, and rendering a mesh
| | 00:04 | instead of a series of flat shaded
surfaces, rendering them as Halos.
| | 00:10 | So, if you open up the Halo file
and render, then you'll get an image
| | 00:15 | something like this.
| | 00:16 | And this is where we've taken this
globe, and in the Material settings, we've
| | 00:20 | enabled Halo and a couple of
things changed at that point.
| | 00:23 | One is a lot of the controls here, in
the Material panel change, to where you
| | 00:28 | have control over the color of the
Halo itself, which is gray over here.
| | 00:33 | The color of any Lines, if they're
enabled and we're going to go ahead and
| | 00:37 | enable Lines here and so now you
can see the Lines, if you rerender.
| | 00:42 | And the lines are like little sparkles
that come out from the inside of the Halo.
| | 00:46 | And then finally the color of any Rings.
| | 00:48 | So let's set the Rings to like to
say a Blue color and enable some rings
| | 00:54 | around the Halo as well.
| | 00:56 | So, by combining these effects, and
changing the Size of the Halo, you can get
| | 01:01 | some pretty, wild, little designs going on.
| | 01:04 | And this is all based on this
sphere and just converting this to Halos.
| | 01:08 | The Shaders.
| | 01:09 | Instead of that normal kind of shaders
that we have, you have the Halo Shader,
| | 01:14 | which I guess is a sixth kind of a shader.
| | 01:16 | And under Halo Size, reflects the
size and the dimension of the Halo.
| | 01:21 | And then the Hardness reflects how
crisp or well defined the halo is.
| | 01:26 | Higher values of Hardness, higher
values of Density, if you will, of the light
| | 01:33 | and the point source in the halo.
| | 01:34 | So, at very low Hardness, it gives a
soft light, and at very high hardness, it
| | 01:40 | gives a point light.
| | 01:42 | Now, Halos are really cool by themselves.
| | 01:44 | But you can also use them to fake a
glint that comes off a very high shiny
| | 01:49 | surface, by compositing them over like
the image of a record or a gold coin, or
| | 01:56 | somebody's teeth or something like that.
| | 01:59 | The number of Rings, and the number of
Lines is controlled here and if you use
| | 02:03 | the Star shape, the number of
stars that come out, are shown here.
| | 02:12 | You can also use an extended kind of an
Alpha, to give a very long effect on the
| | 02:17 | Halo, almost providing like a
glowing energy orb, if you will.
| | 02:24 | And you can use Color Rams as well
to affect the color of the Halo across
| | 02:29 | its dimension.
| | 02:31 | So, that's a little bit about the
Halos that are available in Blender, as a
| | 02:35 | special kind of lighting and shading technique.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Simulating with Subsurface Scattering (SSS)| 00:00 | One of the holy grails of
rendering and shading is skin.
| | 00:04 | Peaches, watermelon, grapes, anything
that has a semi translucent material
| | 00:10 | surface, and then some kind of meat
inside of it and that meat takes some of the
| | 00:15 | color and then reradiates that color
back out through the skin to the camera.
| | 00:20 | That's called Subsurface Scattering or SSS.
| | 00:24 | We'll call it SSS.
| | 00:24 | That should be easy enough for
me to say couple, dozen times.
| | 00:28 | So, any objects, like specially organic
objects have this skin and in order to
| | 00:34 | simulate that effect, Blender recently
got an upgrade to its material system,
| | 00:39 | which we'll link to over here,
and I'll make it a little bigger.
| | 00:43 | In the SSS panel, under Links and
Materials, we have all the normal material
| | 00:48 | settings and then we have this SSS panel.
| | 00:52 | So we have the normal base color of
the surface and the specular color.
| | 00:57 | We used to have to use Ramps to get
this effect, but now SSS is very accurate.
| | 01:02 | First of all, you want to enable
Subsurface Scattering here for this material.
| | 01:06 | Next, you're going to want to make
sure that you've enabled Subsurface
| | 01:09 | Scattering as a render pass here in
the Render panel, so that the pass is taken on.
| | 01:15 | It does take quite a bit of compute power.
| | 01:17 | So if you're doing temporary renders,
you might want to turn that off for all of
| | 01:21 | the objects in the scene, just that
one place and then turn it back on again,
| | 01:25 | when you're ready to do your file renders.
| | 01:27 | Now, SSS takes this base material
color and then adds in a couple of presets,
| | 01:33 | one is for chicken, chicken has a
yellow fat underneath the skin, to make it
| | 01:38 | kind of yellowish looking.
| | 01:40 | Cream, if you look at cream in your
coffee, it's got like a white scattering
| | 01:43 | underneath the surface.
| | 01:45 | Ketchup is obviously red.
| | 01:47 | Marble has a stone color, depending
on the color of the stone underneath a
| | 01:52 | clear, like a quartz surface as well.
| | 01:55 | Potatoes, skim milk, I'm getting kind
of hungry here, but skin, we have two
| | 02:00 | settings for skin, Skin 1 and Skin 2.
| | 02:02 | I've used Skin 1 here as a setting and
whenever you click these, all it does is
| | 02:06 | it loads up a couple of
different presets for you.
| | 02:09 | So the main thing is this color effect
and this is kind of a brown kind of a
| | 02:14 | murky color, so like
somebody who has a really great tan.
| | 02:18 | Then the control here sets the amount or
the degree of influence that this color
| | 02:24 | from underneath affects the
overall skin tone that you see.
| | 02:29 | So if I crank this up to 1 and do a
render, you can see that Blender makes
| | 02:35 | two passes.
| | 02:36 | One pass is that white shade, which
says okay, based on the angle of the skin,
| | 02:44 | relative to the camera and the thickness
of the object at that particular point,
| | 02:49 | how much Subsurface Scattering would
occur and then blends in the amount of
| | 02:54 | color on to that surface.
| | 02:56 | So for just a very slight effect, as if
the person had, let's say, thick skin,
| | 03:02 | there's not too much of an effect, but
still enough to give you those highlights
| | 03:08 | that you get from skin as well as then
when you look at it from the side or more
| | 03:12 | of an angle, you get more of
a darkening kind of a color.
| | 03:15 | Now, there is a couple of
different effects that go on with
| | 03:18 | Subsurface Scattering.
| | 03:19 | One is called Front side scattering,
and the other is called Back side.
| | 03:22 | So if you hold your hand up to a
very bright light, where the light is in
| | 03:26 | back of your hand, you'll see some
red color coming through, because it's
| | 03:30 | passing through the blood.
| | 03:31 | That light is picking up the color from
that red blood and then it's coming out
| | 03:34 | through the front of your skin
and that's called Back Scattering.
| | 03:38 | So these two controls allow you to vary
the amount of front scattering and back
| | 03:42 | scattering that you want to occur.
| | 03:44 | Also, skin and as like with all
semitransparent materials has an Index
| | 03:49 | of Refraction as well.
| | 03:51 | Then the relative size of the object in
Blender units is indicated here for both
| | 03:56 | transmitting the red, green and blue.
| | 03:59 | Different surfaces absorb, those
different wavelengths to different degrees.
| | 04:05 | So in this case with skin, the red
and the blue travel pretty far, because
| | 04:10 | that's purple, the color of blood, and
whereas the green doesn't travel very
| | 04:13 | far at all.
| | 04:14 | So that's Subsurface Scattering, how
to use it, how to enable it and what it
| | 04:18 | does for you in trying to make a
photorealistic render of something that is
| | 04:24 | an organic surface.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying textures| 00:00 | Now while our base material color and
Subsurface Scattering and all that is
| | 00:03 | really cool, what really makes things
believable in the real world is that they
| | 00:08 | have textures to them.
| | 00:09 | It can be caused by growth or age
or wear and tear and imperfections is
| | 00:14 | what makes things really believable
and makes them real, and textures is
| | 00:17 | how it's done.
| | 00:18 | Now texture is a huge and well-
established feature set, so don't expect to
| | 00:23 | get it instantly.
| | 00:24 | There are a lot of different
connotations and things that go along with it.
| | 00:29 | So we're going to break it down step-
by-step to show you the essentials.
| | 00:33 | A texture effectively is a pattern or
something that overlays the base material
| | 00:39 | color and affects the base
material somehow or in some aspect.
| | 00:45 | So let's start off with the simple example.
| | 00:47 | We're going to turn off these textures.
| | 00:49 | In Blender, the material textures are
controlled just the way I just did, by
| | 00:54 | establishing, selecting a texture
channel and then clicking Add New.
| | 00:59 | Then that adds on the texture channel
and now you have control over how you want
| | 01:03 | take in the texture and how you want
to apply it or map it to something else.
| | 01:09 | So I'm going to drag these panes over
here, because I normally think of them as
| | 01:12 | the texture, how you map it
and then what you map it to.
| | 01:16 | Of course, the Preview tries to keep
everything updated on what the current
| | 01:19 | material looks like.
| | 01:20 | To disable the texture temporarily, just
click the checkbox there to disable it.
| | 01:25 | These textures layer on top
of one another as I mentioned.
| | 01:28 | So here in the Texture control you can
change the order in which the textures
| | 01:32 | are applied, because all of these
textures we'll later see are layered on top
| | 01:36 | of one another.
| | 01:37 | So what's a texture?
| | 01:38 | Well, if you come down here to shading
and textures, you get a list of all the
| | 01:42 | textures that are in the file.
| | 01:44 | So let's click on Clouds.
| | 01:46 | Here is a simple cloud texture that we've used.
| | 01:48 | We're going to go ahead and arrange
them like this because this is the way
| | 01:51 | I like to present it.
| | 01:53 | First of all, you have the kind of textures.
| | 01:56 | There are two basic kinds of
categories of textures in Blender.
| | 02:00 | There is procedural textures and then
there is image-based textures or some
| | 02:04 | people call them bitmap textures.
| | 02:06 | Procedural textures are
generated by a math formula.
| | 02:09 | So here we have Clouds.
| | 02:11 | Clouds is probably the most common
texture used in the CG industry, bar none.
| | 02:18 | All it does is it adds some random
puffy kind of variations to something.
| | 02:24 | So here when we click Clouds, we
get a couple of other control panels.
| | 02:29 | The control panel for each
kind of texture is different.
| | 02:33 | So it's going to take a long time
to go through each individual one.
| | 02:37 | I'm going run through Clouds and
probably one other and then let you explore
| | 02:40 | the other ones.
| | 02:41 | The controls for Clouds says okay, what
kind of clouds are we going to generate?
| | 02:45 | Are we going to generate the kind of
default clouds, black and white clouds?
| | 02:49 | Are we going to do color
clouds or some soft noise?
| | 02:52 | Are we going to make it really hard noise?
| | 02:55 | So if we were like doing random
variations on color and side of a colored
| | 03:00 | glass or prism or something like that,
we would want to use something that
| | 03:04 | looks like this.
| | 03:06 | Normally, we just use default soft clouds.
| | 03:08 | We can change the size of noise and the
distinction of what it looks like here
| | 03:14 | and the Preview shows you what this
procedural generation would look like as
| | 03:18 | well as a whole bunch of different
algorithms that are used to calculate where
| | 03:23 | is a white pixel and where is a black pixel.
| | 03:26 | Different kinds of textures
apply to different kinds of objects.
| | 03:30 | There is probably some reference
material you can look into, like here I was
| | 03:34 | doing an insect wing or a butterfly wing.
| | 03:37 | Then I would want to use the Voronoi
Crackle Noise Basis to define where those
| | 03:43 | surface imperfections are in
this case, cells should be.
| | 03:47 | Finally, then when we get into Colors,
we can color these textures right here
| | 03:52 | in the Textures panel.
| | 03:53 | If we color this green, this
is a standard Colorband ramp.
| | 03:58 | So we can change the color here to red.
| | 04:01 | Now we have kind of a red cell wall kind
of a texture that we can lay over let's
| | 04:06 | say a pumping heart or something like
that to make it that much more believable.
| | 04:11 | So this is an example of the cloud texture.
| | 04:13 | The next texture is a marble texture.
| | 04:17 | Here is marble.
| | 04:18 | If you look at a piece of marble on
your countertop or even if you looked up
| | 04:22 | in the cloud and you saw a bunch of
cirrus clouds in the sky, banding across
| | 04:26 | the top of the sky as an upper
atmosphere kind of disturbance, you get this
| | 04:31 | kind of marbling effect.
| | 04:33 | So once you select the type of
texture, no matter what kind of Procedural
| | 04:37 | texture it is, then you get at least
one panel that gives you some control over
| | 04:41 | all the settings and then adds
on all the colors if you want.
| | 04:45 | Colorband, you could add on
let's say shades of colors.
| | 04:50 | So we could add on another
color in the middle here.
| | 04:53 | Let's say I give it a red.
| | 04:55 | Now we get some neat really color
banding that goes along between each of the
| | 04:59 | different colors of this Procedural texture.
| | 05:03 | Then this texture is applied
then somehow to the base material.
| | 05:07 | How is it applied?
| | 05:09 | I'm glad you asked.
| | 05:10 | Well, this Voronoi texture now, which
is really kind of misnamed, because I
| | 05:14 | changed it on the fly.
| | 05:15 | So I'll just come back over here and
show you that we have a little auto thing
| | 05:21 | to auto-name this Cloud texture.
| | 05:23 | It's still the cloud texture, but
it's using a different basis called
| | 05:26 | the Voronoi.
| | 05:27 | So I'm going to go ahead
and change this to a Crackle.
| | 05:31 | Now when we come back over to the
material, now how is this applied?
| | 05:35 | Well, let's look at what it affects.
| | 05:37 | In the Map To panel, we see all of
these different controls here, and I'm just
| | 05:41 | going to quickly run through them.
| | 05:43 | One is this texture can
affect the color of the material.
| | 05:47 | It can affect the normal of the material.
| | 05:49 | Normal is when light hits something
and it bounces off of it, what angle does
| | 05:54 | it bounces off of.
| | 05:55 | So you can see that by applying this
black and white texture to this surface,
| | 06:01 | we make the surface up here to have
these little bumps and ridges where the
| | 06:05 | texture is.
| | 06:07 | We can also apply it to the specularity,
which means that the specular color
| | 06:11 | changes according to the texture.
| | 06:14 | The amount of ambient light is
affected by and controlled by the texture, and
| | 06:19 | the hardness and the mirroring
and indeed even the transparency.
| | 06:23 | So if we wanted this to simulate a black
line's drawing or cracks on the surface
| | 06:29 | of a piece of glass, we could map this
to Alpha as well as Emissions and we can
| | 06:34 | even use a texture to displace a surface
namely, move it and bend it physically.
| | 06:40 | So that's what the Map To
is basically, right here.
| | 06:43 | Finally, if it affects color, then
we can also indicate the color that's
| | 06:47 | affected right here in this RGB panel
area, and the degree to which the color is
| | 06:53 | affected right here.
| | 06:54 | If we want this texture to mix with the
base color, then we set the Color slider
| | 06:59 | down to something here.
| | 07:00 | So let's go ahead and pick a color
texture and go ahead and enable it.
| | 07:05 | That was that marble
texture that I played with before.
| | 07:08 | It's going to affect the color by 50%.
| | 07:12 | So the base color of the material is
this pink and we're going to be adding in
| | 07:16 | this cyan and everything else on top of it.
| | 07:19 | The next thing I'd like to cover in
this essential video is just to make you
| | 07:23 | aware that there is a bunch of inputs now.
| | 07:26 | So now the texture is mapped
spherically according to the original
| | 07:29 | coordinates of the surface.
| | 07:31 | If we wanted to map it to another
object, let's say an empty that was placed
| | 07:37 | somewhere, then the starting point for
the Procedural texture would be altered
| | 07:42 | according to the location of that object.
| | 07:44 | Most of the time, textures are
mapped flat, which means that the X and Y
| | 07:50 | coordinates are directly mapped onto
the surface of the material, but you can
| | 07:55 | also change the size or the number of
times that texture is repeated across
| | 08:01 | the surface.
| | 08:02 | So let's go ahead and change this to 1
by clicking in here and typing 1, Tab,
| | 08:07 | 1, Tab, 1.
| | 08:10 | Notice what happens when we
re-render over in the window.
| | 08:15 | Now you can see that the texture
is much broader and more spread-out.
| | 08:19 | This looks now like the monkey here
was made of brass and it's starting to
| | 08:24 | be corroded or made of copper, I
guess, copper turns green with corrosion
| | 08:28 | over time.
| | 08:29 | So the texture is repeated only one
time across the surface, instead of three
| | 08:36 | or four or five times.
| | 08:38 | So by altering the size here, we
control how fine-grained the texture is and
| | 08:45 | how detailed it is.
| | 08:47 | So that's textures, texture channels,
and how they are mapped input and mapped
| | 08:53 | to the surface that they are applied to.
| | 08:56 | There are textures for materials as
well as, and I should point out here,
| | 09:01 | textures for the world.
| | 09:03 | We talked about world textures, angular maps.
| | 09:05 | In lamps, under lighting, I talked
about light textures and using that cloud
| | 09:10 | texture break up and make the light
a little bit more uneven, as well as
| | 09:15 | brushing when you are doing sculpting
and painting, you can have brush textures
| | 09:20 | that define the kind of brush or
the kind of tool that you're using.
| | 09:25 | Textures then for that reason are a
separate subcontext under the shading
| | 09:29 | context, but they are all
accessed from this one place.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Mapping image textures to an object to create a decal| 00:00 | In this video let's go over how to
map an image texture to an object.
| | 00:05 | So start out with a square here and
as you can see we have a basic gray
| | 00:10 | boring material.
| | 00:12 | If we expand on the texture side, we
see that there is a default anti-texture
| | 00:16 | already mapped according to
original coordinates to color.
| | 00:21 | What we are going to do is change that
and map that to an object but first we
| | 00:25 | need to add that object in 3D space.
| | 00:27 | Let's go ahead and position our cursor
to be in front of the box and press Space
| | 00:34 | > Add > Empty and let's change the
name of that Empty to Decal by typing in
| | 00:39 | Decal here in the Object field.
| | 00:42 | That renames that empty object to the Decal.
| | 00:45 | So, selecting the box again now, we
can map our texture to that object by
| | 00:50 | clicking Object and entering the name
of the object in the Object field, which
| | 00:55 | in this case is Decal.
| | 00:57 | If whatever you typed in, the field is
now red or blank, it means you either
| | 01:01 | typed in the name wrong or typed in
the name of an object that doesn't exist.
| | 01:06 | So check your capitalization, check
your spelling and like that if Blender
| | 01:11 | ever like refuses to take your
entry, it's probably just some minor
| | 01:14 | misunderstanding like that.
| | 01:16 | Now, let's go ahead and assign
our texture by loading in the image.
| | 01:22 | So if we come over here to the Texture buttons.
| | 01:25 | We have our Texture channel but
Blender doesn't know what kind of texture
| | 01:29 | you want to pick.
| | 01:30 | So let's go ahead and pick image.
| | 01:31 | What we are going to do is load up an
image of my daughter from the library that
| | 01:36 | is a transparent image and has an alpha channel.
| | 01:40 | So if you click Load over here, a
panel pops up that allows you to pick
| | 01:43 | the image.
| | 01:44 | So let's go ahead and select
the image from the library.
| | 01:48 | So what we want to do is we would
navigate up one directory, then click on
| | 01:52 | Library > Images > People >
Rebe > balloon premul.png.
| | 01:59 | I have been talking about alpha
channels and like that and the PNG format
| | 02:02 | supports the alpha channel.
| | 02:04 | What rolls in over here, then gives
you a little preview of just her with
| | 02:08 | her favorite balloon.
| | 02:10 | By default an image can be a still,
a movie or a sequence of images.
| | 02:14 | In this case, it's just a still image.
| | 02:16 | That's 640x480.
| | 02:18 | We are going to use the Alpha channel
of this image and we are going to extend
| | 02:22 | the colors of the image outward
instead of doing the normal repeat.
| | 02:28 | That takes all of these border pixels
and instead of repeating the image and
| | 02:32 | tiling it across the
surface, it only uses it once.
| | 02:34 | So now that we've set up that, we can
also show the image with Alpha preview,
| | 02:40 | which shows a checkered
background where the image is transparent.
| | 02:44 | So now when we comeback over here,
let's go ahead and remap this image to the
| | 02:49 | color and now when we do a render, we
see not just the front of it but also now
| | 02:54 | the picture of her over here.
| | 02:57 | If we roll ahead and move this object,
like slide it over to the other side of
| | 03:01 | the cube, that Decal follows that
Empty and it's mapped and then shown on the
| | 03:08 | surface wherever that empty happens to be.
| | 03:10 | If we raise it up, that stretches it
off the center and tries to map the image
| | 03:17 | as a Decal onto the surface of that
cube and that's how you do a Decal.
| | 03:21 | You can scale the empty and/or scale
the image using the size controls here in
| | 03:28 | the Material Settings.
| | 03:30 | Go ahead and change that to a square.
| | 03:33 | If we change the size, it changes the
size of the image or we can also in this
| | 03:37 | case, scale the empty down and
that scales the image down as well.
| | 03:43 | We can also rotate the Empty.
| | 03:46 | By rotating it, we are rotating the
image and how it's mapped onto the surface.
| | 03:51 | Now, if you get to moving this object
around, the Empty is not going to follow.
| | 03:55 | So we want to use parenting here.
| | 03:57 | In this case, we want to click the
Empty and then Shift-click the cube and then
| | 04:02 | press Ctrl key to parent the Empty to
the object, so that no matter where we
| | 04:08 | move this object around, the Decal
stays in the same relative place.
| | 04:14 | That's how you map an image as a
Decal to a surface of another object.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| UV unwrapping| 00:00 | UV unwrapping is the process of applying
an image to a mesh in a very certain or
| | 00:07 | prescribed order according to the faces
and it allows you to actually paint on
| | 00:11 | the faces as you would paint with paintbrush.
| | 00:15 | So we are going to open up flowers from
Big Buck Bunny and select a flower and
| | 00:19 | navigate our way through the panels
to find the Material Shading panel and
| | 00:24 | select the petal color.
| | 00:26 | Go ahead and minimize up the rest of
these, so we are not going to focus on them.
| | 00:30 | I'm going to try to focus on the
Texture panels here and if you look at the
| | 00:34 | blend inside, you can see that the
texture here, which is a color band blend
| | 00:43 | of this brown color,
| | 00:45 | it's applied according to the
UV coordinates of the flower.
| | 00:50 | To see what those UV coordinates are, we
need to go ahead and tab into Edit Mode
| | 00:55 | and over here in the UV Image editor,
we see the UVs for this particular petal.
| | 01:01 | So we can click on a petal, go into
Face Mode and select the linked petals by
| | 01:09 | pressing Ctrl+L after, we select one of
the faces of that flower petal and over
| | 01:15 | here, we have the UV layout
for this particular petal.
| | 01:19 | So each face in here
corresponds to a UV space over here.
| | 01:26 | This is the way you map a 3 dimensional
object to the 2 dimensional image that's
| | 01:31 | loaded up over here or just any kind of
2 dimensional way of really controlling
| | 01:36 | the way and the direction in which
a texture is applied to the mesh.
| | 01:42 | So in this case, that brown color band
is applied with a certain veining on this
| | 01:48 | vertical orientation of the UV.
| | 01:51 | We call it UV because we didn't want
to use X and Y. The U and V coordinates
| | 01:56 | refer to the X and Y axis
if you will of the image.
| | 02:01 | So that each pixel of the image that
occurs on this surface of this leaf, maps
| | 02:08 | to some other face of the image
or whatever texture is applied.
| | 02:13 | In this case, for this Blend inside,
we are using a color ramp blend texture.
| | 02:19 | So these colors are mapped according to
the UV to the surface of the petal and
| | 02:25 | that's how Blender knows
what color to put where.
| | 02:28 | It's just another mapping technique.
| | 02:30 | So, we are going to go ahead and
select all the petals and then we can unwrap
| | 02:35 | them ourselves by pressing U. That
brings up the UV calculation method and
| | 02:40 | there is a couple of different UV
calculation methods, one is which to just do
| | 02:45 | an unwrap and then it just unwraps all
of these and throws them over into this space.
| | 02:50 | The best way that Blender can figure out
and that's called Conformal Mapping and
| | 02:54 | it's actually a very advanced way of
figuring out how to take this 3D shape and
| | 02:59 | map it to a 2D space.
| | 03:01 | We can then press A to select all of
the UV vertices and then press R to rotate
| | 03:07 | it into whatever orientation.
| | 03:09 | We can also scale and G for grab to
move them and orient them however we want to.
| | 03:16 | If we wanted to use an image of a real
petal, we could just overlay then load
| | 03:20 | this image in as a background and
then Blender could use these UV images to
| | 03:27 | map those colors from the petals of
the real flower to the petals of our
| | 03:31 | virtual flower.
| | 03:32 | The number of UV textures that are
applied to any particular mesh is found in
| | 03:37 | the Editing Context on the Mesh panel.
| | 03:40 | There is a list right here of the UV textures.
| | 03:43 | If you only have one UV texture, you
don't need to bother typing in the name UV
| | 03:48 | text over here in the
materials where you apply it.
| | 03:51 | Just simply clicking UV tells
Blender okay, I'm going to go ahead and use
| | 03:54 | that UV texture.
| | 03:55 | So there is only one.
| | 03:57 | Otherwise, to be exactly specific,
you would want to type in the name of
| | 04:01 | the texture.
| | 04:02 | Then you can have multiple mapping
coordinates and it gets a little hairy, but
| | 04:06 | for right now, we can just specify that
one UV texture is used to map whatever
| | 04:12 | texture is applied to the surface
to give the additional coloration.
| | 04:17 | Most often times, UV textures are
mapped to color but you can also map them to
| | 04:22 | normal to do that bumping or to
specularity to for example if this was the face
| | 04:28 | of a person, then you could map it to
specularity and then that would control
| | 04:33 | exactly where all the shiny
areas are on somebody's face.
| | 04:36 | So that's the essentials of UV
unwrapping of how a mesh object can be unwrapped
| | 04:41 | onto a flat surface by pressing U in
the Edit Mode and then pixels in the UV
| | 04:47 | area are mapped to the mesh surface, so
that when you do the image, you get the
| | 04:52 | appropriate mapped image.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying multiple materials to a single object| 00:00 | Here is an example of using
multiple materials to color a mesh.
| | 00:05 | We have an example from Big Buck Bunny
and here is a clump of flowers that have
| | 00:10 | been modeled and textured and
they are shown here in 3D view.
| | 00:14 | If we select any of the individual
flowers, we see that it's outlined in green.
| | 00:18 | That tells us it's a group of
different objects and if we come into the
| | 00:23 | materials shading context, scroll this
over a little bit, we can see that this
| | 00:29 | one flower consists of three materials.
| | 00:33 | The first material is a yellow,
which is called the button.
| | 00:36 | The second is the leaf and the
third is a pink petal material.
| | 00:42 | Now, each of these materials can be in
turn just a single, simple material or
| | 00:48 | they can have all of the
different texturing that's available.
| | 00:52 | So as you can see with this pink
petal material, there is all of these
| | 00:57 | texture channels.
| | 00:58 | These seven texture channels then
combine to make the net result that we see
| | 01:03 | here and the net result when we render.
| | 01:08 | So there is a nice little bouquet of flowers.
| | 01:10 | If you want to give your own special
one a virtual flower, just go ahead and
| | 01:14 | open up that file and render it.
| | 01:17 | So, each object in Blender can have
multiple materials just like we saw
| | 01:22 | with Captain Knowledge, as well as,
now with these flowers, and you cycle
| | 01:26 | through them like that.
| | 01:27 | Now, you assign different parts of
the mesh to have different materials by
| | 01:32 | tabbing into Edit Mode and then
selecting the faces that you want to have
| | 01:37 | the different colors.
| | 01:38 | So we are going to go ahead and
here click on Face Select Mode.
| | 01:42 | If you come over to a particular
material that you like, let's say the third
| | 01:47 | material, I'm going to deselect all of these.
| | 01:50 | Now, when you press Select over here,
Blender selects the faces of the object
| | 01:55 | that have that particular
material assigned to them.
| | 01:59 | We can cycle through and let's say
here is the green, we can select it again.
| | 02:04 | Then if we wanted to know a
particular face, what material it was assigned
| | 02:09 | to, all we need to do is click the
question mark here and then Blender will
| | 02:13 | cycle through all of the available
materials and tell you which material that
| | 02:17 | particular one is.
| | 02:19 | If we want to add on a new material,
let's say we wanted to change the
| | 02:23 | variation of the stock or something
later on or further down here, all we need
| | 02:27 | to do is click New here and then that
adds on a fourth material on to this very
| | 02:32 | same mesh.
| | 02:33 | The name of the material is shown here,
as well as, then over in materials
| | 02:38 | where you have full control over all of
the colors and aspects of the material,
| | 02:43 | as well as being able to cycle through
the materials here, so now I can cycle
| | 02:47 | back down through.
| | 02:48 | When you add on a new material
Blender goes ahead and copies the current
| | 02:52 | selected material as kind of
the basis for you to start from.
| | 02:55 | So, our fourth material is exactly the
same as the yellow except that it's named
| | 03:01 | .001 as indicating that it's a
clone of this yellow button color.
| | 03:05 | Once we get done defining this color,
then we need to go back over here into
| | 03:09 | Edit Mode and select the Faces that
we want to have that new color and then
| | 03:15 | assign by coming back to the Edit panel,
then clicking Assign here to assign
| | 03:20 | those faces to this new color.
| | 03:23 | Now this part, this time is
going to be colored yellow.
| | 03:26 | That's how you assign
multiple materials to the same mesh.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Painting in 3D| 00:00 | Blender offers texture painting,
which is painting in three dimensions.
| | 00:03 | It's as close to painting a real
object as you will ever get on the computer I think.
| | 00:08 | It's a special mode within Blender
and in the 3D view here, we switch to
| | 00:13 | Texture Paint.
| | 00:15 | When you do that, a couple
of things happen over here.
| | 00:18 | One is a Paint panel comes up which
allows you to draw, soften or smear a color
| | 00:24 | with brush controls and brush patterns
and textures and allows you to have a Mix Brush
| | 00:31 | where you mix your colors in
with the existing colors or to Multiply,
| | 00:36 | Darken, Erase and then Add Alpha too.
| | 00:38 | So, you can actually paint holes into
the surface that you are painting and
| | 00:43 | you know to paint, your cursor changes to a
paintbrush and you just start painting.
| | 00:48 | Now, what's happening over here in
this window is that each of these petals,
| | 00:53 | each of these five petals of the
flower, are all mapped to the same material.
| | 01:00 | So they all have the same texture
and the only texture that's active is
| | 01:05 | this BlendInside.
| | 01:07 | And all I have done is I have made some
minor modifications to the flowers that
| | 01:11 | are in the BBB DVD. This isn't my work.
| | 01:14 | This is the work of the Big Buck Bunny crowd.
| | 01:16 | This texture is mapped to UV, through
the UV Texture coordinates and it's mapped
| | 01:21 | color and it's mixing that color in 100%.
| | 01:25 | So it's actually going to
override any base color of the petal.
| | 01:29 | So since each petal is mapped to the
same texture, any changes I made to one is
| | 01:35 | instantly reflected in the other four.
| | 01:37 | And the other thing that's going on is
over here in two dimensions based on the
| | 01:43 | UV texture and I'm just going to go
ahead and switch into Edit Mode right now
| | 01:47 | and select a petal and then Ctrl+L to
select all of the faces of that mesh.
| | 01:51 | You can see that this petal maps
with the UV coordinates to this area of
| | 01:57 | the image and this image is actually
an image file that's saved over here
| | 02:02 | and is called flower.tga and I'm
saving in the Targa format which supports
| | 02:06 | the Alpha channel.
| | 02:07 | So, when we are over here in Texture
Paint Mode, I'm going to switch back here
| | 02:10 | to show you the panel.
| | 02:12 | As I'm painting, I'm just painting
in three dimensions here with my little brush.
| | 02:16 | I have got the white color.
| | 02:17 | It's a very small brush.
| | 02:19 | The other neat thing I can
do is change my brush color.
| | 02:23 | I can also sample on a picture of an
actual flower if I had an actual flower
| | 02:27 | picture over here I could actually sample.
| | 02:29 | Maybe I'll change my brush size a
little bit, make it a little less opaque,
| | 02:34 | increase the Falloff.
| | 02:35 | These Ps here is if you are using a
Wacom tablet and you want to use pen
| | 02:40 | pressure sensitivity, you can enable
that and then as you are painting with your
| | 02:45 | tablet in 3D, then the strength and this
control is affected by how hard you are
| | 02:52 | pressing on the pen.
| | 02:53 | I can change into Airbrush Mode, which
means it continues to spray as long as I
| | 02:59 | hold the mouse down.
| | 03:01 | I'm just trying to make a little pretty design.
| | 03:03 | Then the other thing that's kind of
cool is you can come over here and at any time,
| | 03:07 | you can save your updates just
by doing an Image > Save and then that
| | 03:10 | will save it back out.
| | 03:11 | I recommend that you save your images to
your library file, under image textures
| | 03:16 | and we'll probably call it new flower petal.
| | 03:18 | But now over here, if I press N, I can
see that I can actually paint a movie as
| | 03:23 | well or if I come over here and I
enable my image painting, now I can switch
| | 03:30 | into my image controls and look at
my Paint tool and say paint in red.
| | 03:39 | Now if I paint the image over here,
look what's happening over here.
| | 03:43 | So I'm making a really pretty little variegated.
| | 03:46 | So, I can paint in 2D just like I can
in Photoshop or whatever. Paint a 2D image
| | 03:51 | over here and have Blender
automatically map this image through these UV
| | 03:56 | coordinates and the UV coordinates
I should mention are right here under the
| | 04:01 | Mesh panel, under UV Texture,
this is the one that's active.
| | 04:05 | So it's mapping this image here to the
three-dimensional object over here and
| | 04:11 | that's texture painting in Blender.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using bump maps| 00:00 | Within the world of textures, there is a
special kind of texture called a normal
| | 00:04 | texture, or what's also known as a bump
texture, and here we have an example of
| | 00:09 | a brick texture that's shown.
| | 00:11 | In a normal texture, or a bump
texture, the red, green, and blue channels
| | 00:17 | indicate the direction of the shadow
that would normally happen or the direction
| | 00:21 | of the bump that would normally happen.
| | 00:24 | So when the light hits it, it looks
like it's bumpy, based on the certain
| | 00:28 | direction of a light that
would have normally have hit it.
| | 00:32 | So that's called a normal texture, and
right here, I have a normal texture that
| | 00:37 | I generated by baking the actual brick pattern.
| | 00:41 | If you press Render, you get a
very interesting kind of image.
| | 00:45 | You are apparently looking at a wall of
bricks, and the top of the brick here is
| | 00:49 | kind of brighter, because that's where
the sun light hits it, and then it falls
| | 00:53 | across the face of the brick, and then
underneath is a shadow line where there
| | 00:57 | would be a shadow from the sunlight
casting a shadow from the brick being
| | 01:01 | outside from the mortar.
| | 01:03 | Now the reason it's colored like
this is all in the texture mapping.
| | 01:08 | This is actually just a flat plain
that has this texture mapped to it.
| | 01:13 | So if we come over here and select
the texture, we can see that the first
| | 01:17 | texture is this normal texture, which
is in fact just an image that I took by
| | 01:21 | baking the brick texture.
| | 01:24 | And you can see there is color blue,
and green, and red in places, to
| | 01:28 | reflect where and how the light would
change as it falls across the surface
| | 01:33 | of the brick.
| | 01:34 | In this case this is a standard image texture.
| | 01:38 | The next texture is a cloud texture that
I've mapped to color, just to give some
| | 01:45 | red or black variation to the image,
but the first one is the normal.
| | 01:49 | What's different here is that we have
mapped this to a UV coordinate, which is
| | 01:54 | the UV texture, so I have
unwrapped this plain to UV texture.
| | 02:00 | And I've clicked it to map to the
normal, so that it effects the normal, and
| | 02:04 | you control the amount of effect that
this image has over the bumpiness of this
| | 02:10 | surface, through this slider right here
called Normal, and I have set it up to
| | 02:14 | 1.
| | 02:15 | By default, it's a half.
| | 02:17 | But if you slide this way up, then
when you render, you get a very accented
| | 02:23 | or augmented kind of effect, which you
may or may not like or you may or may
| | 02:28 | not consider better.
| | 02:30 | The Normal effect or Bump mapping
has both a positive and a negative.
| | 02:35 | The first click enables the texture to
apply to the normal in a positive manner.
| | 02:41 | Now because of the way this image was
set, to me, this looks like the mortar is
| | 02:46 | outset and the bricks are inset,
which is a valid mortaring process, but
| | 02:51 | normally, I like to think of
bricks as being outset from the mortar.
| | 02:56 | So by clicking this again, it
reverses the bump, and insets the mortar
| | 03:01 | inside the brick.
| | 03:03 | The same kind of shadows apply, the same
kind of apparent lighting also applies.
| | 03:08 | That's how you can apply a normal
texture to a flat surface to make it
| | 03:12 | appear bumpy.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. AnimationUnderstanding animation| 00:00 | Welcome to animation in Blender.
| | 00:02 | This is where we are going to
actually make our characters move and jump
| | 00:05 | around, and as you can see here,
we have our rabbit jumping rope.
| | 00:10 | Now, this may look overwhelming to
you with all of these channels and
| | 00:12 | everything, but the principles that I'm
going to teach you are exactly the same
| | 00:17 | as used in making this animation, and
making him do this wonderful little jump.
| | 00:21 | And the secret is what's called bones.
| | 00:24 | Bones in animation make the mesh deform
and make it move, and so by controlling
| | 00:30 | the motion of all of these bones, you
then deform the mesh that we see and that
| | 00:35 | is we rendered to make the final animation.
| | 00:38 | To do that, I would like to introduce a
couple of different window types because
| | 00:42 | up until now we haven't really
been talking about time in modeling;
| | 00:46 | we have only been talking about 3D space.
| | 00:49 | So now we have like a
fourth dimension, which is time.
| | 00:51 | So we have to start
modeling and thinking about that.
| | 00:54 | To do that, first, I'd like to
introduce the timeline window, and that's
| | 00:58 | indicated here by this little clock.
| | 01:00 | This timeline window allows us to see
and jump around inside of our animation.
| | 01:06 | So for example, right now we have an
animation that is 136 frames long, and it
| | 01:11 | actually cycles and repeats.
| | 01:14 | The menu for the timeline window is here.
| | 01:17 | We can go over that.
| | 01:18 | That is your basic Playback controls,
and being able to set markers within your
| | 01:22 | timeline within your animation.
| | 01:23 | Here is your current frame number.
| | 01:27 | So if I want to manually advance to a
certain frame in the animation, I can do
| | 01:31 | that or just click or I can also
drag them to get really far away.
| | 01:35 | Over here is our standard VCR controls.
| | 01:39 | That's to skip back to the
very beginning of the animation.
| | 01:43 | That's to play the animation, pause it,
to skip forward or back a keyframe, as
| | 01:49 | well as then go into what's called
automatic keyframing and we'll talk about
| | 01:54 | that little later on.
| | 01:56 | Over here is the Action Editor and
the Action Editor is a whole bunch of
| | 01:59 | channels that are used in animating our
character and each bone or each thing
| | 02:08 | that we are controlling is shown here
as a channel and then there is a little
| | 02:11 | diamonds here for every keyframe, or
every position that we have set, where we
| | 02:17 | want to control the
location or rotation of something.
| | 02:20 | That's something is shown in the IPO
Curve Editor, which is a different kind of
| | 02:26 | window that we'll be getting into
that shows you the animation curves.
| | 02:31 | The scaling and sizing controls and
panning controls are the exact same as
| | 02:37 | in the 3D window.
| | 02:38 | So if I roll my mouse
wheel, I zoom out or zoom in.
| | 02:43 | If I hold the Ctrl key and the middle
mouse button and move my mouse up and down,
| | 02:49 | I'm scaling the display up and
down, left and right, to show more or
| | 02:53 | less of the animation.
| | 02:55 | There are different kinds of
animation curves, as shown here.
| | 03:00 | Now we are going to be
getting into some of those as well.
| | 03:03 | The other thing we are going to be
talking about is shapes and if I select
| | 03:08 | the rabbit here, we have what's called
the Shapes panel that allows us access to
| | 03:13 | and the ability to define the various
shapes of this mesh, so it can change over time.
| | 03:20 | So as he is jumping rope, his belly
jiggles and that belly jiggle is either
| | 03:26 | controlled by a bone or
through what's called a shape key.
| | 03:30 | As he laughs and opens his mouth, and
closes his eyes, those are all different
| | 03:35 | shape keys that are defined here.
| | 03:39 | The influence of each shape key is set
here by selecting Shape and then for
| | 03:45 | this particular shape that's selected,
we show the influence of this shape on
| | 03:51 | the mesh at any
particular time in the animation.
| | 03:55 | So for example, his left cheek
gets puffy from frame 1 to frame 3.
| | 04:04 | So all of these windows work together to
show a comprehensive view and provide a
| | 04:11 | complete animation studio in Blender.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Keyframing objects| 00:00 | At the basic level, what we're doing
is going to be moving objects around and
| | 00:04 | the purpose of this video tutorial is
to show you how you can keyframe the
| | 00:08 | location of objects in time.
| | 00:11 | So what we're going to do is
select our Animation layout.
| | 00:14 | That's number 3 and I would like to use
this Animation layout because it has the
| | 00:18 | commonly used windows.
| | 00:20 | It has the Timeline window, the
Action Editor, and the IPO window.
| | 00:27 | So I have these different kinds of
windows that allow me to control my
| | 00:31 | animation, and do my animation rather rapidly.
| | 00:34 | The first thing you need to do when
you're setting up your animation is to
| | 00:37 | figure out whether you're going for TV,
in the US, which is 30 Frames a Second,
| | 00:42 | TV in the European Union, which is 25
Frames a Second, or Film which is 24
| | 00:48 | Frames a Second.
| | 00:50 | When you figure that out, what you need
to do is come over here into your Scene
| | 00:55 | Render Context and set the
frames per second right here.
| | 01:00 | Now, actually TV is not exactly 30.
| | 01:04 | It's 30.
| | 01:05 | But then you need to divide by 1.001 to
get that 29.97 exact frames per second.
| | 01:15 | So once you set that, then your
animation output will be at this frame rate.
| | 01:21 | Now, normally in Animation,
we work in terms of frames.
| | 01:25 | So if you're animating something for TV,
and then you want to convert it over to film,
| | 01:29 | and you want to change the frame
rate, all of your keying will be off.
| | 01:33 | That's an unfortunate side effect, but
it's something you need to figure out
| | 01:36 | right upfront is what's your
medium and your output is going to be.
| | 01:40 | You can also keyframe and frame stuff
at let's say 10 frames per second, if you
| | 01:45 | want something that's at a low frame
rate and you're going to be posting it on
| | 01:47 | YouTube or something like that.
| | 01:49 | Press 1 on your Num Pad and go to Front view.
| | 01:53 | So the idea in keyframing is that we
move the object where we want it to be at
| | 01:58 | the frame that we want it to be at.
| | 01:59 | So let's go ahead and slide that
over to Frame 1, just by left-clicking
| | 02:04 | and dragging.
| | 02:05 | Now to insert the keyframe,
press I in the 3D view.
| | 02:09 | Now, we have a whole bunch
of things that we can key.
| | 02:12 | We can key the Location of this box,
we can key the Rotation, the Scale,
| | 02:17 | we can key multiple of those
things together at the same time.
| | 02:20 | So Loc, Rot, and Scale or
just Rotation and Scale.
| | 02:23 | So let's go ahead and
click and add those channels.
| | 02:27 | The location, the rotation, and the scaling.
| | 02:30 | Down here in the IPO window,
a couple of neat things happened.
| | 02:34 | One is we have these pretty little
colored lines, but we have some channels over here.
| | 02:40 | We have the location.
| | 02:41 | So there is actually three channels
that control the location of an object,
| | 02:44 | in 3D space.
| | 02:45 | Namely, the X, Y, and the Z Location.
| | 02:48 | Same with Rotation, and same with Scaling.
| | 02:51 | You can see that each curve is a
different color just to visually help you
| | 02:55 | distinguish between the different channels.
| | 02:58 | So then what are we going
to do is we'll jump ahead.
| | 03:00 | So we're going to press the Up Arrow
on your keyboard and that jumps you up
| | 03:04 | by 10 frames.
| | 03:06 | So we'll go up three times to go up
about a second in our Animation and then
| | 03:11 | let's move the box over here, spin it
around a little bit, and scale it up.
| | 03:18 | If I press 0 and look through the camera,
because it's all about the camera and
| | 03:22 | making sure things in view in the camera.
| | 03:24 | We can see that the camera still captures it.
| | 03:26 | Pressing 1 on our Num Pad brings us
back to front view, and now we're going to
| | 03:30 | go ahead and press I again, and
Blender remembers that we last selected Loc,
| | 03:35 | Rot, and Scale from the menu, so our
cursor is automatically positioned there.
| | 03:38 | So all we need to do is click.
| | 03:40 | That adds a second key.
| | 03:41 | Now, as you can see here down in the
IPO window, I'm going to just go ahead and
| | 03:46 | scoot this up a little bit,
| | 03:47 | so that for teaching purposes you can
kind of see that these curves now have
| | 03:53 | gone from a value of 0 which is shown
over here on your Y axis of this grid,
| | 04:00 | up to a value of 1 at frame 31.
| | 04:04 | Now, as we arrow back, we can see in
3D view that the Location, Rotation, and
| | 04:10 | Scale of the box follows
and is mapped to these curves.
| | 04:16 | That's why this is called the IPO window,
because it's short for interpolation.
| | 04:21 | What Blender is doing is it's interpolating,
| | 04:24 | it's computing,
| | 04:25 | what the value of the Location and
Rotation of the cube should be based on this curve.
| | 04:31 | So if we just take one curve, let's say
the location X curve. We're just going
| | 04:37 | to click on that channel, and then
the other channels are hidden from view.
| | 04:41 | We know those channels are there,
because there is a little colored icon next
| | 04:44 | to the channel name.
| | 04:46 | Here we have the curve and if I right
-click on the curve, I can edit this curve,
| | 04:50 | where you can see
that this is a Bezier Curve.
| | 04:54 | It's the same curve that we used in
3D space when we were modeling with
| | 04:59 | Bezier Curves.
| | 05:00 | So I can grab this handle and I can
grab it and move it around and change
| | 05:05 | the shape of the curve, and then that
changes the interpolation that occurs
| | 05:11 | between the two points.
| | 05:12 | I can also work in what's called keyframe mode.
| | 05:15 | So I'm going to tab out of Edit Mode
and press K on the keyboard with my
| | 05:20 | cursor in the IPO window.
| | 05:23 | If I press K in 3D view, I'd bring
up the Knife tool, which is-- I don't
| | 05:26 | want to cut the box.
| | 05:27 | I want to switch to keyframe mode,
and when I switch to keyframes, now I
| | 05:31 | have yellow vertical lines that
control all of the selected channels for
| | 05:37 | this particular object.
| | 05:39 | If I come over here and I press A twice
in the channel selection area, I select
| | 05:46 | all of the channels.
| | 05:48 | Now, when I can right-click on a key
and move it, I change the interpolation.
| | 05:56 | So now if I drop it over here, now the
cube goes from the same location to the
| | 06:01 | other key location, but it does
so over the course of 60 frames.
| | 06:06 | So that's keyframing concepts in Blender,
and that's how you make an object move
| | 06:11 | from place to place using keyframes.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Keyframing materials| 00:00 | Almost anything in Blender can be
animated, including the colors of things.
| | 00:04 | This tutorial is going to show you
how to animate and change the colors of
| | 00:08 | an object.
| | 00:09 | So let's go ahead and jump over to
Animation Screen layout and we're going to
| | 00:13 | change from an Action Editor here
to be my Buttons Window and align it
| | 00:18 | vertically so that I can
see it and work with it.
| | 00:21 | So if we come over here to the Shading
Context, let's go ahead and switch to
| | 00:27 | Camera View by pressing 0 on your keypad.
| | 00:31 | So we can see the cube, and
press Z so we go into Shaded view.
| | 00:34 | So now we have the color of the cube.
| | 00:37 | Let's make it of pretty color, blue.
| | 00:40 | So now, the cube is blue.
| | 00:42 | Down here in the IPO window,
we can switch to a Material set of IPOs.
| | 00:49 | With our cursor over here, and the
Shading panel, we press I. Now, we're going
| | 00:57 | to insert a key not for the object
Location, Rotation, and Scale, but instead
| | 01:01 | we're going to key the material.
| | 01:04 | So we can key a whole bunch of different stuff.
| | 01:06 | We can actually key everything if we want to.
| | 01:09 | For this training tutorial,
I'm just going to key the RGB.
| | 01:12 | So the Red, Green, and Blue.
| | 01:13 | So I'm keying the R, G, and B values
here. At Frame 81, the cube is blue.
| | 01:19 | So if we scoot on back to frame 1, and
make the cube-- Let's make it fuschia.
| | 01:28 | And over here then press I and key the
colors again we have, and I'm going to
| | 01:33 | pan this view by holding Shift+Middle-
mouse button, and then moving my mouse to
| | 01:39 | the right.
| | 01:41 | We have now the IPO curve for the colors
and now that we can see that the colors
| | 01:46 | change and as we go through and cycle
through our animation, we can see in 3D
| | 01:52 | view that the color of the
object is actually changing.
| | 01:56 | These are the exact same
curve controls as before.
| | 01:59 | I can right-click on a curve, Tab and
there is my Bezier Handles to change
| | 02:04 | the shape of the curve.
| | 02:05 | I can break the handle into a vector by
pressing V. I can also extend and this
| | 02:10 | is a little tricky when it gets out into math.
| | 02:13 | But I can also change the
extrapolation type of the curve.
| | 02:18 | So if I wanted just to go linearly
between the two colors, I could choose Linear
| | 02:25 | and now instead of it being a nice
smooth curve, now it's a straight line.
| | 02:29 | So now the curve changes linearly or
I can have it jump from one color to the
| | 02:34 | other by changing from the other kinds
of Interpolation Modes to Constant.
| | 02:38 | Then I can also manually set the value
for any curve, either by jumping to the
| | 02:44 | keyframe there and then changing the
value over here in this slider, or I can
| | 02:50 | edit the curve and changing the value
over here in the Y value setting for
| | 02:56 | that particular curve.
| | 02:57 | So I can tab into Edit Mode and right-
click and then set this value manually.
| | 03:04 | That's how you change the colors of
objects over time and animate the colors of
| | 03:09 | any object in Blender by
animating the material settings.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating Shape keys| 00:00 | Blender has the ability to
change or morph the shape of objects;
| | 00:05 | other applications call
this setting up morph targets.
| | 00:09 | We call them Shape Keys in Blender.
| | 00:12 | What you want to do is you want to
select the shape, select the mesh that you're
| | 00:17 | going to be changing the shape of, and
go over here into the editing context.
| | 00:22 | You'll have a Shapes panel.
| | 00:23 | Sometimes it's hidden or tabbed to
other panels, but I've broken it out
| | 00:27 | separately here for training purposes.
| | 00:29 | What we want to do is add the Shape Key,
and the first Shape Key that you add
| | 00:33 | is called Basis.
| | 00:35 | You have Relative and Absolute Shape Keys.
| | 00:37 | We almost always use Relative Shape
Keys because the location of each vertex is
| | 00:42 | saved relative to this Basis Key.
| | 00:46 | We can define this key as in 3-D
view to always show the Basis shape, or
| | 00:52 | whatever shape we have selected.
| | 00:54 | We can also mute shapes, so that they
don't take effect, so if we're just doing
| | 00:58 | some testing or whatever, we can just
mute out the shape if we don't want to use it.
| | 01:03 | So to setup a second shape key, we just
add another Shape Key and we're going
| | 01:08 | to go ahead and type-in what the name of it is.
| | 01:10 | In this case, we're going to
make Captain Knowledge breathe.
| | 01:12 | So we want to name this key Breathe.
| | 01:15 | This will be the shape that he
takes when he's expanding his chest.
| | 01:19 | So this is his normal posture.
| | 01:21 | So we're going to tab into Edit Mode
and use our Proportional Editing tool by
| | 01:26 | pressing O and selecting
some of those chest vertices.
| | 01:33 | In side view 3, go ahead and
draw them out, G, and move them out.
| | 01:40 | His jaw is going to move a little bit too,
because as you breathe, you're moving
| | 01:44 | your jaw to suck in some air.
| | 01:46 | I'm going to scroll this down a
little bit, just rises up as he breathes.
| | 01:51 | Now this is very important. The
shape of this Shape Key is locked in when
| | 01:57 | you exit Edit Mode.
| | 02:00 | So when I press Tab now,
that Breathe Key is locked in.
| | 02:04 | Right now it has 0 influence, but if I
slide the Influence slider over you can
| | 02:09 | see his chest moving.
| | 02:14 | So that's how you add a Shape Key.
| | 02:15 | You can switch back to the Basis
Shape Key or any other Shape Key here by
| | 02:19 | selecting it from the slider.
| | 02:21 | So that's how you create all the
different shapes for your character.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating Facial Shape key animation using reference video| 00:00 | The big use of Shape Keys is also in
facial animations and what we have here is
| | 00:05 | some reference video and reference
video is essential when you're trying to do
| | 00:10 | face shapes in any kind of animation.
| | 00:12 | It's very helpful to look at some real footage.
| | 00:15 | If you press N here in the UV/Image
Editor, you see that this is setup for a
| | 00:19 | movie and we're going to
click Auto Refresh here
| | 00:21 | so that every time we change a frame,
it changes the frame in the movie.
| | 00:26 | Now, we can come down here and click
Play and we can see how the shape of
| | 00:31 | the face changes.
| | 00:32 | Notice the jaw comes down, and the
eyes light up, and the eyebrows move,
| | 00:37 | and there's lots of different motion
going on here as she in this case says
| | 00:43 | the letter A.
| | 00:44 | So we're going to press Escape to stop
that from playing, and this is also the
| | 00:48 | way you can watch reference
video right inside Blender.
| | 00:51 | So then we want to mimic this timing
and shape of that word as she's saying
| | 00:58 | that word in here.
| | 01:00 | So we're going to add a Shape Key,
going to call it A, and this is the shape
| | 01:05 | that the mouth and the face will take
when you say the letter A. So I'm going to
| | 01:10 | go ahead and edit this now to open
the jaw, turn off Proportional Editing
| | 01:17 | because I'm doing some pretty fine controls.
| | 01:20 | Take his lips down and I
think you guys get the idea.
| | 01:28 | I don't think you need to listen to me
| | 01:30 | point and click for a-half-an-hour.
| | 01:33 | But Shape Keying can be very tedious
and you should know that it takes quite a
| | 01:37 | bit of time to get a realistic but
good looking shape of all the different
| | 01:43 | things that are going on, when
somebody says a particular letter.
| | 01:48 | Anyway, after you've edited the shape
of the mesh to be as you want it, then
| | 01:54 | you lock in that Shape Key, by having
it active over here and tabbing out of Edit Mode.
| | 02:00 | Now, we can see as we slide our slider
that he's opening his mouth to say the
| | 02:07 | letter A. That's how you do
facial animation in Blender.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Animating by combining Shape keys| 00:00 | So now in this video, we are going to
combine the different shape keys into an
| | 00:05 | animation using our
Breathe and our A shape keys.
| | 00:09 | So I have modified the Desktop layer a
little bit to give us a little bit more
| | 00:12 | room to work with the IPO window.
| | 00:14 | As we play the video, we can see
that she starts to say "A" right around
| | 00:20 | frame 70.
| | 00:22 | We don't want to leave her
in that particular position.
| | 00:25 | So now, right here, what we want to do
is select the A shape, and the A shape
| | 00:31 | starts out with the 0
influence right around here.
| | 00:34 | So I'm just going to Ctrl+Left-Click
in the IPO window, and that inserts
| | 00:39 | the key.
| | 00:40 | The other way to insert a key is just
by moving this slider, and every time you
| | 00:44 | move this slider on this frame, the
Shape Key influence at that frame is set.
| | 00:51 | So then as we move our Arrow key or
where we use the Right Arrow key, she comes
| | 00:57 | to the full A shape right around
here, around frame let's say 91.
| | 01:02 | So now we can slide the Influence
slider for that A Shape Key all the way over,
| | 01:07 | and then that sets the A here.
| | 01:09 | So now our character goes from no
influence on the A shape, all the way up
| | 01:16 | to full right here.
| | 01:18 | Now she closes her mouth right to there,
so we are going to go ahead and slide
| | 01:22 | the slider back down again.
| | 01:24 | So now we have our virtual character
matching the human in terms of timing for
| | 01:30 | when they say the A.
| | 01:32 | Now the breathing has to be coordinated,
because you need breath in order to say
| | 01:37 | A, and you can't say A
while you are breathing in.
| | 01:40 | So we want a fully
expanded chest right around here.
| | 01:44 | So we are going to select this Breathe
channel, and I'm just going to go ahead
| | 01:48 | and Ctrl-click on one right here.
| | 01:51 | And now this Breathe is fully
influencing our shape, and normal breathing you
| | 01:57 | take about one breath every three seconds.
| | 02:00 | That takes about one second breathe in,
one second to breathe out, and then you
| | 02:04 | have like a one second rest in between.
| | 02:07 | So we are going to backup by 30
frames by pressing the Down Arrow three
| | 02:11 | times, and then wherever the green
bar is intersecting to the 0, we just go
| | 02:16 | ahead and click.
| | 02:17 | Now our character breathes in,
and then start saying the A shape.
| | 02:24 | And I'm going to go ahead and Shift-
click on A so we can see both of those
| | 02:26 | curves, and we can see how they interact.
| | 02:31 | And then finally, he is going to have
to breathe out as he says the A. So I'm
| | 02:34 | going to make sure that my
Breathe channel is selected.
| | 02:37 | You can go ahead and then you click
down there, and so now he breathes out
| | 02:41 | slowly as he says A.
| | 02:43 | That's how you combine and use
multiple shape keys together to provide an
| | 02:48 | overall convincing both
facial and shape key animation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with lattices| 00:00 | A neat way to change the shape of an
object is through the use of a thing
| | 00:04 | called lattice.
| | 00:05 | A lattice is a special kind of mesh
shape that acts like a squisher that
| | 00:14 | squishes another shape.
| | 00:17 | And so when you use press Space and Add
down here the very bottom is a special
| | 00:22 | kind of object you can add
which is called a Lattice.
| | 00:25 | Now the lattice it looks like a square,
but you can edit it like you can in the
| | 00:30 | other object and make any other kind of shape.
| | 00:32 | What we are going to do is tab into Edit
Mode, and the shape of the lattice says
| | 00:38 | how it's going to mush the
other object that it's affected.
| | 00:43 | So let's go ahead and press A to
select all these vertices, and scale them
| | 00:48 | in the Z direction.
| | 00:50 | Let's say up by a 2.
| | 00:51 | All right, so now we have a basic
lattice shape that looks like a rectangle.
| | 00:57 | Now to make this lattice affect some
other object, we select that object, in
| | 01:01 | this case this sphere, and
we add on a Lattice Modifier.
| | 01:07 | In the Object field here, we want to say
what the name of the lattice is because
| | 01:10 | you can have a lot of lattices in here.
| | 01:12 | The name of this lattice is up here
and by default it's called Lattice.
| | 01:15 | So let's go ahead and name that
something a little bit better called bouncy,
| | 01:19 | in lower case.
| | 01:20 | So when we come over here, we
want to type in the name bouncy.
| | 01:25 | Now by default the lattice affects all
of the vertices within the sphere here.
| | 01:30 | We can restrict it to only affecting
certain lattice groups like if we had a
| | 01:34 | face section of this sphere, then
we would enter the name face here.
| | 01:40 | But now notice what's happened to this sphere.
| | 01:42 | And I'm going to press 1
here to go to front view.
| | 01:45 | It has become an ovoid shape.
| | 01:48 | Now the neat thing about the lattice
shape is that as it changes shape, the
| | 01:54 | object it influences changes shape as well.
| | 01:58 | So if we tab into the Lattice Edit
Mode, and let's select the bottom two
| | 02:03 | vertices here, if we grab those and
slide those notice what happens to
| | 02:08 | the spherical shape.
| | 02:09 | It is deformed according to the
deformation that's occurring in the lattice.
| | 02:14 | So by changing just a few vertices
here in the Lattice, and setting a very
| | 02:20 | simple shape key here, we can affect
all of these vertices and the shape of
| | 02:25 | this overall sphere.
| | 02:27 | The other neat thing about lattices
is that as you move the lattice, the
| | 02:32 | deformation of this shape is relative
to the location of the other object.
| | 02:37 | So if I move it out of the way, the
object stays in the same place but
| | 02:44 | change its shape.
| | 02:46 | If I jiggle this, then this is
stimulating exactly what would happen like if a
| | 02:50 | ball hits the ground and jiggles a
little bit because it's made out of gel or
| | 02:55 | it's a water balloon or something like that.
| | 02:57 | The other neat thing too is then since
it's relative to the object center, if I
| | 03:01 | change the location of the object by
pressing G, and now as I move the sphere,
| | 03:08 | this sphere changes its shape as well.
| | 03:10 | And as it passes through this, this
is used in CG films and like that to
| | 03:15 | simulate like the gravitational warp
effect, or when somebody is throwing a
| | 03:19 | ball, how the ball kind of change its
shape, and then catches up with itself, as
| | 03:24 | it accelerates and decelerates.
| | 03:27 | That's a very common use of the lattice as well.
| | 03:29 | So that's how you can affect the
overall shape of an object by using a
| | 03:33 | thing called a lattice.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using hooks| 00:00 | Another very cool way to modify the
shape of an object is through the use of
| | 00:05 | what's called a hook that acts
just like a fishhook on something.
| | 00:10 | So we can select, let's say these
vertices here, and I have tabbed into Edit
| | 00:14 | Mode, and I've selected these vertices,
and if I come down, still in Edit Mode,
| | 00:19 | under Mesh > Vertices > Add Hook,
I now have two options. I can add a hook
| | 00:26 | to what's called an empty or
to another selected object.
| | 00:30 | I'm going to go ahead and click on New
Empty here, and empty is a special kind
| | 00:33 | of object in Blender that's
really just a point in space.
| | 00:38 | Now when I tab out of Edit Mode, I see
that my sphere here has another modifier
| | 00:44 | called a Hook Modifier to an Empty.
| | 00:47 | The name of the object is here an Empty,
and now as I grab and move the Empty,
| | 00:53 | look what's happens to
the surface of this sphere.
| | 00:56 | It gets stretched out.
| | 00:57 | So these vertices move along with this Empty.
| | 01:03 | If I wanted to move it for a one-to-
one relationship, I keep the Force at 1.
| | 01:07 | Otherwise I can drag this down to like a 0.5.
| | 01:10 | Now for every 2 units that I move the
Empty, the vertices deform by 0.5,and
| | 01:17 | this is acting like a rubber band was
super glued to the top of the sphere.
| | 01:21 | So that's the way you can use hooks.
| | 01:23 | So now I can just animate the
location of this Empty and it will change
| | 01:28 | the shape of the mesh.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with Vertex groups| 00:00 | Vertex groups are handy way to
organize a very complicated mesh.
| | 00:04 | Here we have Captain Knowledge, and
as you can see he is composed with many
| | 00:07 | different parts, but he is one unified model.
| | 00:11 | Over here in the Editing Context, we
have a panel under the Links and Materials
| | 00:16 | devoted to Vertex Groups.
| | 00:18 | And Vertex Groups are a way to break up
a mesh by assigning each vertex or face
| | 00:24 | to a particular group.
| | 00:26 | If we go ahead and zoom in on his face
here, now I have Ear here selected as the
| | 00:31 | default Vertex Group.
| | 00:32 | If I press Select here, I'm going to
select those vertex groups that are part
| | 00:38 | of the Ear group.
| | 00:40 | I can deselect and then change and
select a different Vertex Group, let's say
| | 00:44 | Helmet, and now when I select,
now I get the helmet vertices.
| | 00:49 | So if I want to work on just part of a
model, or assign let's say I'm working
| | 00:54 | on the face, and I have defined this
Face group here, and I press A to deselect
| | 01:00 | everything, and I press Select here,
now I'm selecting all of the Face Vertex
| | 01:05 | Groups, and now I can very easily work
and assign the same material to those
| | 01:10 | groups as well.
| | 01:11 | If I don't want a Vertex Group
anymore, I can delete the group, or I can
| | 01:15 | create a new group.
| | 01:17 | So let's go ahead and just
create a new group, and call it Belt.
| | 01:22 | And now we need to assign
some vertexes to that group.
| | 01:25 | So I'm going to select some vertex groups here.
| | 01:27 | Ctrl+L selects the belt buckle, and
then select the belt itself by clicking on
| | 01:34 | those faces, and now we click Assign.
| | 01:38 | This assigns these
vertices to this particular group.
| | 01:42 | And I can also then create a new
group called Pants, and keep selecting.
| | 01:49 | I would like Face Select Mode when I'm
doing vertex groups, but you can also
| | 01:54 | just switch over here to
vertices and select individual vertices.
| | 02:00 | And you can assign them to this vertex group.
| | 02:05 | A vertex can be a member of multiple groups.
| | 02:07 | So there is many different ways
you can have whole substructures, and
| | 02:10 | sub-groupings, and like that, you can
have a hand, as well as a glove vertex and
| | 02:15 | have all of these finger vertices
here, all part of multiple groups.
| | 02:21 | Vertex groups are essential when it
comes down to telling which bone needs to
| | 02:25 | apply and affect which parts of the mesh.
| | 02:29 | So vertex groups are a way to
manage a very complex mesh in Blender.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating armature objects| 00:00 | Armatures are the way you make
characters move in Blender and in every
| | 00:05 | other animation package.
| | 00:07 | Armatures is a special kind of object,
and so what we usually do is we add it
| | 00:13 | inside the character that
we're going to be animating.
| | 00:17 | Now what we want to do is we want to
start out with what's called the Root bone,
| | 00:20 | and the Root bone is right here at the
base of the back in humanoid features.
| | 00:26 | Depending on the creature you're
animating, I've animated game characters that
| | 00:30 | are from other worlds and so you can do
some very bizarre shapes of creatures.
| | 00:35 | So you just have to kind of figure out.
| | 00:37 | Well if I was a skeleton, where is
the base of the skeleton, where does the
| | 00:42 | skeleton sort of originate from?
| | 00:45 | And in humanoids it
originates at the base of the spine.
| | 00:50 | So to add an Armature, it's very simple.
| | 00:52 | We just go Space, Add and Armature.
| | 00:55 | Now once we do that a bunch
of different things happen.
| | 01:00 | One thing is we have this first bone
and the bone name, if we press N, is
| | 01:05 | shown when we go into Edit Mode, and
we select the bone by clicking on the
| | 01:10 | bone itself.
| | 01:13 | So we have the Armature overall, which
is going to be his overall skeleton and
| | 01:18 | then we have bones that make
up pieces of that Armature.
| | 01:22 | So we're going to rename
this first bone to be Root.
| | 01:26 | And over here under Editing Options we
have now information about the armature.
| | 01:31 | We can change the way it's displayed,
for example, clicking X-Ray here, shows
| | 01:35 | the Armature all of the time.
| | 01:37 | For very complicated armatures we have
Bone layer, so this bone right now is
| | 01:42 | on this layer.
| | 01:43 | I can move it to different layers and
therefore hide it from view if I want to.
| | 01:47 | I can show the bone as different kinds
of shapes, either as a Stick, or as a
| | 01:54 | what's called a B-Bone a bendy bone,
Box bone, or as an Envelope, which gives
| | 01:59 | me a little better idea of where this
bone is positioned and what vertices it's
| | 02:05 | influencing.
| | 02:06 | We can show the Axes of the bone,
as well as the Name of the bone.
| | 02:10 | So these different Display Options
allow you to just easier editing and
| | 02:14 | easier control.
| | 02:16 | To add on a new bone, we select the tip
of the parent bone and just E to extrude
| | 02:23 | out another bone, and then we
can change this to let's say Spine.
| | 02:29 | If we select the bone itself and not
just the tip or the root of the bone, we
| | 02:33 | can see down here under Armature Bones
that this selected bone is called Spine
| | 02:38 | and that's a child of Root.
| | 02:40 | This means that when we leave Edit
Mode and we enter what's called Pose Mode,
| | 02:44 | which is very special for armatures, as
we move the Root bone, the Spine bone is
| | 02:50 | connected to the Root bone, so the
Spine Bone moves along with the Root Bone.
| | 02:55 | Now the Pose Mode changes
the poses of the character.
| | 02:59 | The Object Mode actually
moves the entire Armature.
| | 03:03 | So if we wanted to work on the armature
outside the body we could just move it
| | 03:07 | over here to the right, and
that changes the object location.
| | 03:11 | Most of the times you want to change the
location of the Root bone in Pose Mode,
| | 03:16 | so that any vertices that are assigned
to it or any meshes that it's controlling
| | 03:22 | also move along with the bone.
| | 03:25 | Edit Mode is used then to actually
change the length of the bones or the
| | 03:29 | position of the bones, or
to add additional bones.
| | 03:33 | So those are the three different
modes and what there are used for.
| | 03:36 | So in conclusion an Armature is the
skeleton that's inside a mesh that makes
| | 03:41 | the mesh move.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Mirroring armatures for bilateral creatures| 00:00 | So as we create our armature, we are
going to go ahead and select the bone here
| | 00:05 | and then tab into Edit Mode.
| | 00:07 | So as we work with the root bone and
then we work our way up to the spine bone.
| | 00:12 | What we want to do is kind of use the
mesh that we are rigging for reference,
| | 00:17 | and the way we can do that is come over
here and Shift-click on Layer 2 and we
| | 00:21 | are in Wireframe Mode, so we'll be able
to see the armature and we can also turn
| | 00:27 | on X-Ray up here like I talked about before.
| | 00:30 | As we work our way up in the Armature,
I want to note a couple of things.
| | 00:36 | One is you want to put the tips of the
bones where there are vertex rings, or
| | 00:41 | edge loops, when we modeled the mesh
so that the mesh can smoothly deform.
| | 00:46 | From any tip of any bone, you can
extrude out another bone to come up here
| | 00:51 | to the chest area.
| | 00:53 | I have created two bones here;
| | 00:55 | one on the waist bone that goes out
to his belt buckle and then another one
| | 01:00 | out to his chest.
| | 01:02 | Bones don't have to be connected to
one another and we'll go ahead and scale
| | 01:05 | in here on his hand.
| | 01:07 | Here is his hand bone, and then we have
the thumb and the pointer and everything
| | 01:12 | and you can see the names of
the bones showing up over here.
| | 01:16 | So we have his pointer and notice
now as we get into bilateral creatures,
| | 01:20 | we have an issue because I'm lazy and
I only like to do half the amount of
| | 01:24 | work that I have to do.
| | 01:25 | So what I'm going to do is I'm going to
put an .L right here and as I come down
| | 01:30 | the ArmHi and the ArmLo, everybody uses
different names for the different bones.
| | 01:35 | So you kind of get a lesson in
biology sometimes when you look at
| | 01:39 | somebody else's rigs.
| | 01:41 | But here is the bone, this is connected
to the leg bone, shinbone is connected
| | 01:45 | to the leg bone and then we have
the foot down here at the bottom.
| | 01:50 | And what I have done is I have a toe
bone, so that I can move his toes up and
| | 01:55 | down but then the foot bone is the main
bone that I use to position the foot and
| | 02:00 | here is the heel bone just for extra
control and just a little extra guiding and
| | 02:05 | positioning when I get into animating.
| | 02:08 | So now as we have these bones that
form the left side of the body, we need to
| | 02:12 | mirror them on the right side.
| | 02:14 | And so we are going to go into Edit Mode
and in the Front view, select the bones
| | 02:18 | that make up the half of the
body that we want to mirror.
| | 02:22 | So we are going to do B and drag and
Shift+Select, then the hip as well as
| | 02:28 | the shoulder.
| | 02:29 | Now, since these bones are over here as
the selected bones as list, we just do a
| | 02:35 | quick quality check to make sure they
are all .L to mean for the left side.
| | 02:39 | Now we can Shift+D to duplicate them
and click in place and go to Armature
| | 02:47 | > Mirror > X Global.
| | 02:49 | Now what's happened is those bones that
I selected and duplicated have now been
| | 02:54 | flipped on the X-axis.
| | 02:56 | I can G+X to move them over and line
them up with the other core bones in
| | 03:04 | the center.
| | 03:05 | Click to drop them and now you notice
that they are named Shoulder.L.001, which
| | 03:10 | is the standard thing that Blender
does whenever you duplicate something.
| | 03:13 | So what we want to do now is to go
Armature > Flip Left & Right Names.
| | 03:19 | Now what Blender has done is it has
taken that .L and it has changed it to an
| | 03:23 | .R.So now we have individual
bones for each side of the body.
| | 03:27 | We can't just mirror the armature
because we want the left arm to be swinging
| | 03:31 | forward while the right arm swinging
back as he is walking and things like that.
| | 03:34 | So we need a balanced
armature for bilateral creatures.
| | 03:39 | And that's a real quick
way on how you can do that.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Attaching mesh to the armature by way of skinning| 00:00 | Now we have reached the point in our
process where we need to skin the armature
| | 00:04 | and the skin we are going to use is
this mesh and this process is called
| | 00:09 | skinning, when we actually take the
mesh and we wrap it around the armature.
| | 00:13 | Now as we did, we have mirrored this
armature so that we have bones for the
| | 00:17 | left and the right side.
| | 00:19 | So far, this mesh, we have
been using the Mirror Modifier.
| | 00:22 | What we need to do is apply the
Mirror Modifier so that now the mesh has
| | 00:26 | effectively doubled in size and
we have vertices on each side.
| | 00:30 | So that now this bone over here can
control the right arm vertices and the left
| | 00:36 | arm bone can control these left arm vertices.
| | 00:40 | Now that we have done that, what we want
to do is put this mesh under control of
| | 00:45 | the armature and the way we put one
object under control of another is through
| | 00:50 | the parenting relationship.
| | 00:52 | So we select the mesh, Shift+Right-
click on any bone in the Armature, and then
| | 00:57 | press Ctrl+P.We have three options;
| | 01:00 | we can put the entire mesh under
control of one bone namely that chest bone
| | 01:05 | which is not what we want.
| | 01:06 | We want the entire mesh controlled
by the entire armature that as the
| | 01:11 | armature goes into these different
poses, it drags that portion of the mesh
| | 01:16 | along with it.
| | 01:18 | Once we do that, we now have four
options that go back to those vertex groups.
| | 01:24 | As you recall, the vertex group is a way
to sub-divide out the mesh, and the way
| | 01:28 | in which Blender knows which vertices
to move when a bone moves is by having a
| | 01:34 | vertex group that is named the same as the bone.
| | 01:38 | What I want to do is have Blender
guess from the envelope of the bone which
| | 01:43 | vertices to include in that group.
| | 01:46 | Here, if I choose this, it
just creates empty groups.
| | 01:49 | So I'm going to Create From Envelopes
and once we do that apparently, nothing
| | 01:54 | happens but recall from the bone
discussion, we have these Envelopes that we can
| | 01:59 | use to display the area of
influence of each of these bones.
| | 02:05 | So now when we Tab into Edit Mode and
examine the mesh and I'm going to deselect
| | 02:11 | here by pressing A. Now under Vertex
Groups, instead of those helmet and ears,
| | 02:16 | we now have a vertex group
for every bone in the armature.
| | 02:21 | And now unfortunately, we begin the
very tedious manual process of making sure
| | 02:25 | that Blender knew what it was
doing and it did it pretty well.
| | 02:29 | What I would like to do is I like
to start small and work my way up to
| | 02:32 | the larger groups.
| | 02:35 | So I'm going to start with the thumb.
| | 02:38 | So coming over here and clicking on the
left thumb, I now select those vertices
| | 02:45 | and now I have to zoom in on the thumb
to make sure it grabbed all of the right
| | 02:49 | ones and it tried but it wasn't that good.
| | 02:53 | So in this case, we want the ring of
the thumb and up to the first joint.
| | 03:00 | So what we have to do is select only
those vertices that make up that part
| | 03:04 | of the thumb.
| | 03:05 | Make sure we grab at least this
middle edge ring and then click Assign.
| | 03:12 | After we have done that, we press A,
and move on to Thumb.L.001 which is that
| | 03:20 | second bone in the thumb and click
Select, and then that should select the tip
| | 03:27 | of the thumb and as you can
see, it doesn't quite do that.
| | 03:31 | We need to grab maybe, just a few
more around here and then click Assign.
| | 03:36 | Now if I come out here to my bone and I
right-click on a bone, now when I move
| | 03:41 | this bone, this thumb moves.
| | 03:44 | So that's what we need to do.
| | 03:45 | We need to go through each bone, like
the fingertips and then we work our way up
| | 03:50 | to the hand and then to the lower arm
and the upper arm and I usually work in
| | 03:55 | one side of the body and then down the other.
| | 03:59 | So I like you go ahead and keep doing
that, practice on making those groups and
| | 04:02 | modifying those groups to
contain the appropriate vertices.
| | 04:06 | Some things to look out for.
| | 04:08 | If you are in here and you are
modifying the pinky fingertip group and you do
| | 04:13 | something like this, then you come
over to the Pinky.L and you click Assign.
| | 04:21 | You just made a boo-boo, because it
forgot to look over here into front
| | 04:24 | view, and saw that when you selected
in side view, you also selected the
| | 04:27 | right most pinkies.
| | 04:29 | Now unfortunately, what you are going
to end up with is when you move this
| | 04:32 | bone, you are actually going to end up
moving both pinkies and that's not going
| | 04:37 | to be good.
| | 04:38 | So when you get down testing, after you
skin a bone, go ahead and move that bone
| | 04:44 | to make sure that all of the vertices
that you need to move actually move and
| | 04:49 | that not accidentally some other
vertices and some other part of the mesh were
| | 04:53 | left selected and in fact,
are being moved by the bone.
| | 04:56 | That's skinning in Blender and we'll
check back after you have gone through and
| | 05:01 | verified and tested that every bone
moves the appropriate vertex group.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Posing a character| 00:00 | Okay, so now we have the
bones moving the armature around.
| | 00:05 | If you open up this file, we see
that we have each bone in Pose Mode.
| | 00:11 | We can select let's say the left arm
bone here and as we rotate the bone around
| | 00:17 | using a little rotation widget here,
we can see that he's moving his arm.
| | 00:21 | So now it's time to pose him in
different poses that we want him to take.
| | 00:27 | Then we could let Blender figure out
through the IPO Interpolation, what to do
| | 00:32 | in order to get him from one pose to another.
| | 00:35 | Then he can move all of the
different bones, so we don't have to keyframe
| | 00:38 | each and every bone.
| | 00:40 | Speaking of bones over here in the
Outliner view, I would like to call your
| | 00:43 | attention to the fact that we have
now Captain Knowledge as the name of the
| | 00:47 | armature that has two major subjects.
| | 00:52 | One is a series of poses.
| | 00:55 | It's called Pose bones and they are all
under control of this Root bone that's
| | 00:59 | right there at the base of the spine.
| | 01:01 | From the root bone, we have the rest of
the back and the left and the right hip
| | 01:07 | as well as the waist bone coming out.
| | 01:09 | So this is a hierarchical tree of all
of the different bones in the armature.
| | 01:16 | So if you're ever looking in a file,
like looking at somebody else's file, or
| | 01:19 | even looking at our file, and you
want to see how the rig is structured and
| | 01:24 | what's parented to what and what bone
controls the other bone, and you can sing
| | 01:28 | that little song, then you can
look over here in the armature.
| | 01:32 | Also, after the armature
is then the actual mesh.
| | 01:36 | This says that this mesh is
under control of the armature.
| | 01:40 | As we look at the mesh we can see
all the modifiers and all of the
| | 01:43 | different vertex groups.
| | 01:45 | If we're in Edit Mode, and we come
down here, we can see the different vertex
| | 01:50 | groups that make up the mesh.
| | 01:54 | So once we Tab out of Edit Mode, you
select a bone and his hands are not really
| | 01:59 | in a natural position, so let's go
ahead and key those bones into a pose.
| | 02:05 | So what we want to do first is
deselect all of the pose bones, press B and
| | 02:11 | select the hand and all of the finger bones.
| | 02:13 | Once we've selected those, we want
to press I, to create a rotation key.
| | 02:20 | Now over here in the Action Editor, we
just created a whole bunch of IPO curves.
| | 02:26 | If we come down here and select Pose,
we can see each and every one of those
| | 02:31 | IPO curves, or until you get into
tweaking animation, we really don't need to
| | 02:35 | worry about that.
| | 02:36 | I'm just letting you know that each
one of these little keys is a whole
| | 02:40 | different IPO set of curves
for all those different channels.
| | 02:45 | It's a lot better to work with keys here.
| | 02:47 | So, let's say over the course of 20
frames, and I've kind of adopted 20 frames
| | 02:52 | as kind of the standard, when we get
into action editing and everything, you can
| | 02:57 | then control how fast these 20 frames
are played back in the actual animation.
| | 03:04 | So all we really want to do is
identify the actual poses that the different
| | 03:07 | parts of the body can go through.
| | 03:10 | We're going to name this action to
be Clench.L, since we're going to be
| | 03:15 | clenching the left fist.
| | 03:17 | What we want to do now is zoom in here,
and simply select and rotate these bones
| | 03:22 | into the clenched fist position.
| | 03:28 | So now we're going to switch into
Solid Surface Mode to see all of our little
| | 03:33 | problems and issues that we thought we
were doing a good job, but we still have
| | 03:37 | some more posing to do.
| | 03:39 | So we would just rotate
the finger joints around.
| | 03:43 | So now what all we want to do is
assume a nice natural position for the
| | 03:48 | hands, so it doesn't look like he has
broken his fingers or he is holding on
| | 03:53 | to something.
| | 03:56 | Then also we want to check to make
sure that the finger is an overly rotated
| | 04:00 | into the actual mesh of the hand,
like that, like his finger has somehow
| | 04:05 | gone into the middle of.
| | 04:06 | Ow, that looks really painful.
| | 04:09 | So we want to just make sure that
we've got a nice natural position, okay.
| | 04:13 | Then once those are all done, we
want to select them and I, to key those
| | 04:20 | bones in positions.
| | 04:22 | Now notice I have not changed the Hand
bone here, so the two keys are connected
| | 04:27 | by a yellow line and that
means that bone hasn't moved.
| | 04:30 | So now as we go back and forth in our
animation, we can see him opening and
| | 04:35 | closing his hand, from frame 1 to frame 21.
| | 04:39 | This is called Posing, and
that's how you do it in Blender.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using inverse kinematics| 00:00 | The other way to pose your armature
is through the use of what's called
| | 00:04 | Inverse Kinematics.
| | 00:05 | In this video tutorial, I'll show you
how to set up and use Inverse Kinematics.
| | 00:10 | Inverse kinematics is
the opposite of kinematics.
| | 00:13 | Kinematics is when you pose your
character by manually positioning the bones.
| | 00:18 | In this case, though, we want Blender
to point to and figure out for us how to
| | 00:25 | pose the bones so that the
bones reach some certain target.
| | 00:29 | An IK is actually a constraint.
| | 00:31 | It constrains and forces the
bone to behave in a certain way.
| | 00:35 | The most common IKs are used in hands
and feet, because instead of trying to
| | 00:41 | pose how a leg moves, we can just
establish an empty or any other kind of object
| | 00:49 | and establish a relationship that says, hey!
| | 00:51 | I want you to change this leg,
however you need to, so that as I move this
| | 00:58 | empty, I can move the leg and Blender
figures out how to best move the leg so
| | 01:04 | that the foot and leg bone and hip
bone and all move to make that target.
| | 01:10 | So let's right-click on the hand bone,
which puts us automatically in to Pose
| | 01:14 | Mode and over here, let's add a constraint.
| | 01:16 | Here under the Constraints, we
have an IK Solver Constraint.
| | 01:21 | In here we need to enter the name of
the empty or the name of the object that
| | 01:25 | the bone is going to point to.
| | 01:27 | So what we're going to do is right
about in here we're going to go ahead and
| | 01:33 | press Shift+S and snap
our cursor to the selection.
| | 01:38 | That gets it right down there on the
bone, put down there on the tip of the
| | 01:42 | hand, where your palm of your hand
would be, and press Space Add > Empty.
| | 01:48 | Now I'd like to name my empties
based on what it is they are controlling.
| | 01:53 | So if you press N to bring up the
Transform Properties box, you can type in
| | 01:58 | Hand.L. You can also go do it
over here in the Links and Materials.
| | 02:05 | When we right-select the bone, we can
type in Hand.L and if you type name in
| | 02:10 | right to match the case and all that,
then you saw the bone shift a little bit.
| | 02:15 | Now the bone and the entire armature
all the way back to the root, will bend to
| | 02:20 | meet and try to reach for this
empty, no matter where it is.
| | 02:25 | So I'd like to carry it out at the front.
| | 02:27 | Okay, normally we don't want the
entire spine and everything deforming to
| | 02:33 | meet this empty.
| | 02:35 | Although, now you want a certain
portion of it and the portion of the armature
| | 02:40 | that you want to deform
is called the Chain Length.
| | 02:43 | Zero means the entire chain
all the way back to the root.
| | 02:46 | If we only restricted it to like say two
bones in the chain, then only these two
| | 02:53 | bones will move, as I move the empty around.
| | 02:58 | You can see that the rest of it stays the same.
| | 03:01 | So for this chain, I'm going to go
ahead and use the shoulder and you can see
| | 03:05 | this yellow line that shows you
where the chain ends, end part of the
| | 03:10 | shoulder bone as well.
| | 03:11 | Now when you add a constraint to a
bone, it turns yellow when you add an
| | 03:16 | IK constraint.
| | 03:18 | A Green constraint is another
kind of constraint, which is a Limit
| | 03:22 | Rotation constraint.
| | 03:23 | Notice I put on his lower forearm to
show that this bone can only move as an
| | 03:30 | elbow move, sort of as a hinge bone.
| | 03:33 | By limiting the Y and the Z rotations,
now this bone can't like fly off to the
| | 03:38 | side or anything like that and look unnatural.
| | 03:42 | So now by animating the location of
these empties, I can very easily make
| | 03:52 | Captain Knowledge do whatever I want to do.
| | 03:55 | So I'm controlling the whole rig
just by moving these four empties.
| | 04:02 | We need to go ahead and add
another one down here to his foot.
| | 04:05 | There's a couple of different
kinds of foot rigs that people use.
| | 04:09 | One matches the IK to this foot bone.
| | 04:11 | The other matches it to the toe bone.
| | 04:14 | I like to go ahead and use the
rotation and the location of the foot empty to
| | 04:21 | control the orientation of the foot.
| | 04:25 | That's IK rigging in Blender.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a walk cycle with inverse kinematics| 00:00 | Now, it's time to make our character walk.
| | 00:03 | Walk-cycles are very complex.
| | 00:05 | There are lots of things going on.
| | 00:06 | I'm just going to try to
show you these essentials.
| | 00:08 | Many people spend years studying
animation, myself included, to try to come up
| | 00:14 | with realistic ways to make
your characters believable.
| | 00:18 | First of all you can use a reference
image. You can also use motion capture.
| | 00:23 | That I have spent quite a bit
of time studying as well.
| | 00:26 | But for reference images make sure
that you have your background image coming
| | 00:30 | up here and this is an outside plate
that was shot of me walking up to the building.
| | 00:35 | There are 430 frames that
we are going to animate.
| | 00:38 | Make sure Auto Refresh is
turned on and that it's a movie.
| | 00:41 | This is 25% reduction;
| | 00:43 | there is another movie in that same one
that's the full HD version in case you
| | 00:47 | want to work with that.
| | 00:49 | Working in full HD just has a lot more detail.
| | 00:52 | All right, so first we want to key the
location of the IKs in the rest position.
| | 00:58 | This is called the Reference Position
and what you want to do is establish a
| | 01:02 | repeatable position that the character
can go back through, so that you always
| | 01:07 | can kind of get your bearings and kind of reset.
| | 01:09 | So we are going to go ahead and
press I and Loc, and that locks in an IPO
| | 01:16 | for every Empty.
| | 01:18 | Now that Empty is always at Frame 1, I
can always go back to and copy these keys
| | 01:23 | that are shown right here.
| | 01:24 | All right, then we are also going to
be moving the Armature, but we are not
| | 01:29 | going to be moving the
Armature object during the walk-cycle.
| | 01:34 | During the walk-cycle we are going
to be moving the whole body, and so
| | 01:37 | that's the root.
| | 01:38 | So what we want to do is create a new
action called Walk, and we don't need
| | 01:45 | these hand bones here.
| | 01:47 | So we can b and then left drag, click box,
select all these channels and press X
| | 01:52 | to erase those channels.
| | 01:53 | What we do want to do is select the root
bone and key its location and rotation,
| | 02:02 | because your body sways and
turns as it's moving through space.
| | 02:06 | So now we are going Up Arrow a couple
of times and we can see that I enter the
| | 02:11 | frame right around, Frame 15 here,
you can start to see me come into play,
| | 02:17 | actually a little bit before that Frame 3.
| | 02:20 | So really are pretty much coming right away.
| | 02:23 | The first foot to hit is my right foot
that clicks right there at this frame.
| | 02:29 | So what I want to do is I want to go
ahead and move my character from the rest
| | 02:32 | position into what I call the Step Out
Position, which is the first major pose
| | 02:38 | that your character will
reach as he starts to walk.
| | 02:42 | So this is kind of the first step,
and that gets him into a moving kind
| | 02:46 | of position.
| | 02:47 | So we are going to move the IK
target for the right foot out and key that
| | 02:52 | location of that target, and then we
are going to right-click on the root bone
| | 02:57 | and move the guy out and a little bit
to the right, because as you are walking
| | 03:03 | now you start to put all
your weight on the right foot.
| | 03:07 | So once he looks pretty good and we
are going to drag him down a little bit
| | 03:10 | because the weight is
coming down on that right foot.
| | 03:14 | And once he is in a pretty good
position we are going to key that location
| | 03:17 | and rotation.
| | 03:19 | So now we have two keys for both
the root bone as well as for the IK.
| | 03:24 | Let me drag that over here, with a
pretty smooth transition in between the
| | 03:28 | two of them.
| | 03:30 | So now if we play this motion, we can
transition from the rest position and to
| | 03:35 | apart where we have now made
contact with the right foot.
| | 03:39 | Now let's just keep working on the
right foot, we see that the right foot
| | 03:43 | actually stays in place until right
about this frame right here, and then starts
| | 03:48 | to pick up from here.
| | 03:50 | So right at this frame we want to right-
click on this key and drag it over it to
| | 03:56 | match on this frame.
| | 03:57 | So now the IK stays in that
position for this frame range.
| | 04:02 | Once we have done that we see that
the left foot now is starting to move.
| | 04:07 | So we are going to select this right
foot IK target and I'm just going to go
| | 04:13 | ahead and flip to Layer 13 only and
that reveals only my IKs around that layer.
| | 04:20 | So backing up, now what
happens to the left foot?
| | 04:22 | Well, as the right foot comes forward
we have to assume the left foot now has
| | 04:27 | launched off from this position.
| | 04:29 | And it's starting and is moving through
space and comes on the frame right here
| | 04:34 | and right there at Frame 21 makes contact.
| | 04:39 | So we are going to move this guy out
there because we are already at Frame 21.
| | 04:44 | We are going to move him out one stride length.
| | 04:47 | Normally your stride length is half of
your height, I'm going to guess that this
| | 04:50 | is about 1, 2, 3 units or
so for a six-foot person.
| | 04:54 | And we are using one Blender,
using just one foot, and we key the
| | 04:59 | location there.
| | 05:00 | Meanwhile the skeleton has come forward,
so if we Shift-click, now we are seeing
| | 05:07 | the mesh and the skeleton, still being deforms.
| | 05:10 | Now we'd right-click on the root bone
and move this guy forward and you can see
| | 05:16 | how the bones come into play.
| | 05:18 | And he is going to rest a little bit.
| | 05:22 | And now he is walking along.
| | 05:24 | So we are going to key this location
here as well, and now we have pretty much
| | 05:30 | our first sliding or skating walk-cycle.
| | 05:32 | What we want to do next now is pick
the feet up, we don't want to shuffle
| | 05:37 | and wear out our shoes.
| | 05:39 | So we are going to look at this IK
and notice only the Y axis is changing.
| | 05:45 | So now we have to make it into
a step to where it's lifted up.
| | 05:50 | So about half way through this cycle,
we're just going to lift this IK up and
| | 05:56 | key the location up there.
| | 05:57 | If we want to get fancy we could key
just the Z location and let the X, and
| | 06:04 | the Y go.
| | 06:05 | That's kind of getting ahead of ourselves.
| | 06:08 | And then we want to do the same then
for the first opening frames for this
| | 06:16 | motion, for the right foot.
| | 06:19 | So the first we've framed it may look
kind of silly, but we'll keep working
| | 06:23 | at it.
| | 06:24 | And that's what you do to key the
locations of the IKs and the bones to match
| | 06:29 | your reference footage.
| | 06:30 | So let's come back when that's all done.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Completing the walk cycle| 00:00 | Okay, we have done a little bit of
work here and we have come up with a
| | 00:03 | starting walk-cycle.
| | 00:05 | Walking in animation is very difficult
because everything is moving, so there
| | 00:09 | is a whole art to it.
| | 00:11 | And we can see the walk-cycle here.
| | 00:13 | In this Window over here I have View Properties.
| | 00:16 | I have the View locked to the root bone
of Captain Knowledge, and so we can go
| | 00:24 | ahead and turn the Mesh On, and
when we run the animation by pressing
| | 00:30 | Shift+Alt+A, the animation runs in every window.
| | 00:35 | I get kind of little nauseous
sometimes when I'm watching this, when it's
| | 00:38 | focused on the root bone.
| | 00:40 | But there is a little bobbing motion going on.
| | 00:42 | I want to show you that to just
don't walk in a straight line for fun;
| | 00:46 | you can film yourself doing
all sorts of strange walks.
| | 00:49 | Lots of subtleties in the walk-cycle,
just a little bit of rotation of the hips.
| | 00:55 | As he comes forward I've rotated the
root bone backwards to reflect that he has
| | 01:00 | this mass up here, this muscles chest.
| | 01:03 | And so as he steps out of that mass
has inertia and wants to hold back.
| | 01:07 | So you rotate it back as he strikes
and then as he comes forward we have the
| | 01:13 | next key cycle, it says 21,
which is the crossover point.
| | 01:18 | Now as his left foot comes forward,
notice that his left foot is accelerating.
| | 01:22 | It's not exactly half way because the
foot actually kind of accelerates from
| | 01:28 | being the pusher to then starting out
in front, which is the next keyframed
| | 01:33 | pose here.
| | 01:34 | Where the hips have rotated over to
the other side and rotated in top view
| | 01:39 | as well.
| | 01:40 | You can go ahead in top view you can
see that I have rotated the root bone
| | 01:43 | here so that the whole hips are
swiveling as he is reaching forward with his
| | 01:47 | left foot.
| | 01:48 | Also I'd like to point out that I have
his chest bone here doing just a slight
| | 01:54 | little bobble, as he comes down, the
chest bone goes up to reflect that the body
| | 02:01 | mass wants to stay where it was.
| | 02:04 | I remove the IKs from the hands.
| | 02:07 | I really didn't need them and I could
just swing the arm bones, the ArmHi and
| | 02:12 | the ArmLo, I could just swing them back
and forth, counter to whatever strike it
| | 02:18 | is, so when your left foot goes
forward your left arm goes back.
| | 02:22 | Also instead of Empty I went ahead and
edited the Mesh and I added these two
| | 02:27 | disconnected bones call ik_Foot.L and
ik_Foot.R. As bones to the armature but
| | 02:36 | they are not connected to anything and
then targeted the foot bone just to use
| | 02:41 | that bone as the target.
| | 02:43 | And so this way by rotating this bone
I can control the angle of the foot and
| | 02:50 | then of course by moving the bone,
I control the location of the foot.
| | 02:53 | I use those toe bones that we put in
there to simulate the deformation that
| | 02:57 | occurs in the foot as you lift off.
| | 03:00 | So you can bend your toes a little
bit, his boots aren't that stiff.
| | 03:03 | I should also point out that the root
bone moves forward one-and-a-half units
| | 03:09 | every ten frames, and so over the
course of the walk-cycle which is started
| | 03:14 | here by the Walk Marker.
| | 03:15 | So from Frame 11 to Frame 51, the root
bone moves forward by 6 units, and that's
| | 03:22 | called our Stride Length.
| | 03:24 | And that becomes important a little later on.
| | 03:27 | But feel free to play with this rig,
play with the angles, you can make him
| | 03:32 | creep, you can make him
march, you can him strut.
| | 03:35 | There's all sorts of
different kinds of walk-cycles.
| | 03:37 | So go ahead and create a whole
bunch of different walk-cycles based on
| | 03:42 | what's fun.
| | 03:43 | And that's how you create a walk-
cycle and make Captain Knowledge walk
| | 03:47 | using Blender.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Limiting range of motion and degrees of freedom| 00:00 | As we get into rigging and making our
character move, once we've added these IK
| | 00:06 | constraints onto these bones, Blender
will attempt to orient the bones anyway
| | 00:12 | that it can in order to solve this
problem of how to meet the target.
| | 00:19 | If it gets out of range, then the bones
is kind of snap out and it's just like
| | 00:24 | you can't quite reach it.
| | 00:26 | So that also means though that as we
comek over here, let's say to the side view,
| | 00:31 | it means that if this IK target happens
to get behind it, you would be able to
| | 00:36 | actually reach around and look his
elbow or something like that and that's
| | 00:40 | just not physically
possible and it won't look real.
| | 00:43 | So Blender provides the option to
limit the rotation of these bones in the
| | 00:49 | IK chain.
| | 00:51 | So here I've set up a standard
kind of a limit for the elbow.
| | 00:56 | The elbow is a hinge joint.
| | 00:59 | He can't twist his elbow.
| | 01:01 | The elbow can only go 1 axis and
that's actually the X-axis here.
| | 01:07 | So as I'm moving my IK up and down,
you'll notice that the elbow just
| | 01:14 | rolls along the X-axis.
| | 01:17 | And that translates into a very
realistic motion when we add and enable the mesh
| | 01:22 | by Shift-clicking Layer 2 here.
| | 01:25 | Now as he punches forward and he is
going to punch out ignorance or something like that,
| | 01:29 | as his arm comes back,
the elbow looks like a real elbow.
| | 01:34 | And it's not twisting or turning
or doing anything funky like that.
| | 01:38 | And the way we set that up is in
the Armature Bones panel, for a bone
| | 01:44 | that's within an IK chain you'll
have these limitations and locking
| | 01:49 | mechanisms that appear down here.
| | 01:51 | And what we've done is we've limited
the X rotation from anywhere from -100
| | 01:57 | degrees to a max of 70 degrees.
| | 02:02 | And what I'm going to do is I'm just
going to drag here and you can see the red axis
| | 02:06 | because RGB, XYZ, the red arc,
indicates the range of motion that this bone
| | 02:14 | is able to take and as I restrict
down this range of motion you can see the
| | 02:19 | arc getting smaller.
| | 02:21 | I have locked the Y-rotation and the Z-
rotation. I could go ahead and just lock
| | 02:28 | the Y-rotation, and now when I click
Limit Z, because Z is a full circle,
| | 02:35 | Blender draws this sort of envelope
that shows all of the possible places that
| | 02:41 | this bone could point to.
| | 02:43 | It's kind of a surface, kind of a
mesh, or nylon mesh kind of a thing.
| | 02:48 | And that tells you that for this bone to
be in this position then these are the
| | 02:53 | possible positions for this
child bone further on down the road.
| | 02:58 | And allows you to visually see
where this guy is able to reach.
| | 03:02 | In this case let's say we want to knock
it down a little bit. If we go ahead and
| | 03:07 | set them, minimum Z to let's say minus
-100 degrees, he'd actually be able to
| | 03:13 | twist his elbow and sort of a kind of a
shoulder kind of a mechanism to be able
| | 03:18 | to get to any of these other positions as well.
| | 03:21 | Actually when we do the shoulder bone,
we'll do the X and the Z as well.
| | 03:26 | But for the elbow and for the knee,
just disabling the limit and locking the X
| | 03:32 | is the proper way to go.
| | 03:34 | And then we're going to reset this back
up to the way it was at the beginning.
| | 03:37 | And that gives a fairly realistic
range of motion and that's the way you set
| | 03:41 | up range of motion in Blender, so
that the IK solver can provide realistic solutions.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Managing actions using the Action Editor| 00:01 | As we create these sets of poses and
these sets of actions, Blender provides
| | 00:05 | the Action Editor that gives us a tool
to manage the complexity of dealing with
| | 00:10 | all of these different bone changes and
poses that we're manipulating and going
| | 00:14 | through.
| | 00:15 | So what I have set up is a simple little
robot file that demonstrate the concept
| | 00:19 | behind the Action Editor and the NLA.
| | 00:23 | In this action we have selected the Put action.
| | 00:27 | In this Put action as you can see here
consists of two bones, I have a Base bone
| | 00:32 | and an Arm bone for the little robot,
and he is going to put whatever object he
| | 00:39 | is grabbing up onto the shelf,
and that's what that action does.
| | 00:44 | So I can run this forward and
backwards, and see that it just does that.
| | 00:48 | Now the Action Editor I
actually have two actions.
| | 00:52 | I also have a grab action.
| | 00:55 | And the grab actions starts from this
rest position and takes these two bones,
| | 01:00 | and he goes down, and he grabs the object.
| | 01:04 | But now it needs to bring it
back up to the rest position.
| | 01:07 | I want to demonstrate that
these keys are selectable.
| | 01:10 | When they are bright yellow,
they are actually selected.
| | 01:14 | So we are going to select these two keys
by Shift+Right-clicking on both of them
| | 01:19 | and Shift+D to duplicate just
like any other object in Blender.
| | 01:24 | We are going to go ahead and drag
these out and drop them right around Frame
| | 01:27 | 21 which is a delta of 20 frames,
which is shown down here when you are
| | 01:33 | clicking-and-dragging, Blender
often shows you down here how far you've
| | 01:37 | dragged something.
| | 01:38 | So now the little robot goes from his
rest position, down grabs the ball, and
| | 01:45 | then comes back up to his rest position.
| | 01:47 | So that's the way you can manipulate
these keys inside the Action Editor.
| | 01:51 | The other thing you can do is when
you switch from action-to-action you're
| | 01:57 | generating a list of actions that
we're going to in the later combine.
| | 02:01 | You can adjust the timing of any individual arm.
| | 02:04 | Let's say I wanted this arm on this
sweeping up motion to a start later in
| | 02:09 | this cycle.
| | 02:10 | So you can just grab this selected key,
and move it up, let's say to about here.
| | 02:16 | And now the arm doesn't start
rotating until much later in the animation.
| | 02:23 | I can go ahead and drag this way
over here and make it very dramatic.
| | 02:27 | I wouldn't want to design a robot that
flips something around like that, but
| | 02:29 | you can.
| | 02:30 | All right, so those are the two
actions, and that's working with the
| | 02:34 | Action Editor.
| | 02:35 | There is a couple of other things you
can do, you can add a marker into your
| | 02:39 | Timeline to indicate what kind of
action is going on at this particular time.
| | 02:45 | You can also work with different
keys, and different selections of
| | 02:50 | different channels, you can change
the ordering of the channels if things
| | 02:54 | get out of order.
| | 02:55 | When you get into armatures with a
hundred bones, you want to be able to order
| | 03:00 | these channels, so that you can rapidly
work with the most common bones at the
| | 03:05 | very top, and then all of the bottom
bones you can leave at the bottom, and let
| | 03:09 | them scroll off the list.
| | 03:12 | You can also do a whole bunch of
selections, and say if I wanted to drag
| | 03:16 | everything out, I could go ahead and
select all of the keys that are head of
| | 03:21 | my Current Time Code.
| | 03:23 | The Time Code is shown here
as the green vertical bar.
| | 03:27 | You can also name the
markers by the way as well.
| | 03:30 | So that's the Action Editor.
| | 03:31 | That's what it allows you to do, as you
sit here with your armature, you build
| | 03:35 | up a whole bunch of actions that
your character would go through.
| | 03:40 | When you look in the BBB you'll see
hundreds of actions that each character can
| | 03:44 | perform, and when you think about it
there is just a hundred different things
| | 03:47 | that you can do as well.
| | 03:48 | That's the Action Editor in Blender.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Blending actions together using the Non-Linear Animation Editor| 00:00 | So now that you have your library of
Actions defined as shown here in the middle
| | 00:05 | window, we have like the Put Action here,
which puts the ball onto the shelf and
| | 00:12 | then comes back down again.
| | 00:13 | Then we also have the Grab Action that
grabs the ball and brings it back up.
| | 00:17 | So now that you have all of these
Actions together, you want to combine them
| | 00:21 | into a movie or an animation.
| | 00:23 | These actions are almost like
fundamental little units of motion that your
| | 00:28 | character can do, in this
case, this little robot.
| | 00:31 | So to put those together and sequence
them into a flow, we use what's called the
| | 00:39 | NLA or the Non-Linear
Animation Editor and that's here.
| | 00:44 | Now before you begin using the NLA, you
got to remember that whatever the active
| | 00:49 | action is, is linked to this armature
and so it's going to want to do that
| | 00:54 | action when you start playing.
| | 00:56 | So you want to delink your actions or
any actions from your armature before you
| | 01:02 | begin the NLA process.
| | 01:04 | Now I have arranged kind of a
workflow here that's kind of a non-standard
| | 01:08 | desktop, but I thought it worked
because here I can see what's going on in
| | 01:11 | 3D view.
| | 01:12 | I can see my Actions and
then I can work with my NLA.
| | 01:15 | The first thing we want to
do is add in an NLA strip.
| | 01:18 | So let's say at frame 50 in the
animation we want our robot to grab
| | 01:24 | something and pick it up.
| | 01:26 | So what we want to do is come over
to Strip > Add Action Strip > Grab.
| | 01:33 | And this takes that standard Grab
Action that used to be only from Frames 1 to
| | 01:39 | 20 kind of as a standard kind of
scaling and pops it in here in our real
| | 01:44 | animation at frame 51.
| | 01:47 | So now between frame 51 and 70 or
so, our robot picks up the ball.
| | 01:54 | Great.
| | 01:55 | Now we want to add in the next
Action Strip to put it up onto the shelf.
| | 02:02 | Now the next action is put up here.
| | 02:04 | So this overall action is now Grab and then Put.
| | 02:08 | So now the ball is up here, the
robot continues and it puts it up onto
| | 02:13 | the shelf.
| | 02:14 | If we press N, we can bring up
the Strip Properties, which tells us
| | 02:19 | numerically, exactly where the strip
starts and ends and then what portion of
| | 02:25 | the Action is played.
| | 02:26 | Now by default it's locked to play
the entire Action, but you don't have to
| | 02:31 | have the whole Action.
| | 02:32 | You could have an Action where I'm
walking, tripping, and falling, I'm standing
| | 02:37 | on my head, doing a cartwheel or
whatever and then you can unlock and use these
| | 02:42 | frames then to pull out the portion of
the action that I want to use right here
| | 02:46 | right now in this particular animation.
| | 02:50 | The other thing I can do is if I'm
walking and chewing gum at the same time,
| | 02:55 | which is a very dangerous
condition, I could probably also use the
| | 02:59 | Auto-Blending, and what Auto-
Blending does is it tries to manage or merge
| | 03:06 | overlaid actions together and averages
the bone actions together so that they
| | 03:12 | look natural and integrated.
| | 03:15 | So now we've slid this back and now
there's a little bit of overlap here is
| | 03:19 | where the bones will actually kind of
accelerate through and not appear to
| | 03:24 | stop in the middle here.
| | 03:26 | It'll accelerate through and
transition right on into the next action.
| | 03:31 | So that's the way you can blend and
seamlessly integrate these actions together.
| | 03:36 | The last neat feature in the NLA is
that you don't have to use the same speed
| | 03:43 | that was set up here.
| | 03:44 | Recall, like say if we rigged
this for a standard 20 frames, but we
| | 03:49 | really wanted it to take, say 3
seconds, we can scale the whole animation
| | 03:54 | here by entering 3.
| | 03:56 | I'm going to scale this over here a little bit.
| | 03:59 | Now this animation takes place
3 times as slow as you can see.
| | 04:06 | So this is the way you can change the
speed of your animations in the NLA,
| | 04:11 | sequence them, blend them, and arrange
them into the final complete animation of
| | 04:18 | whatever it is you want your character
to do at whatever point in the overall
| | 04:23 | animation that you want him/her/it to do it.
| | 04:27 | And that's the NLA in Blender
and how it all brings all of these
| | 04:31 | actions together.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Tracking| 00:00 | Very often in animation, it's very
handy to have other objects face other
| | 00:07 | objects or track to other certain
kinds of objects so that everything is not
| | 00:11 | flying out there in space.
| | 00:14 | The most common situation I run into is
tracking the camera, having the camera
| | 00:19 | track or follow an object as it moves
through the scene, and in order to set up a
| | 00:25 | camera track, what we have
right here, is very simple.
| | 00:28 | All you do is select the camera and
I've created a TrackTo constraint.
| | 00:35 | The TrackTo constraint is actually this
object called face.005 and if I hide the sphere,
| | 00:41 | I reveal this little empty
that's sitting there in the middle.
| | 00:46 | If I bring up the Properties, then
I can see that this is the object
| | 00:50 | called face.005.
| | 00:53 | This is a takeoff on the lighting files
so that's why there's so many of them.
| | 00:58 | No matter where I move the
camera, it always faces that empty.
| | 01:04 | Even if I move it around the other side,
it turns and rotates automatically so
| | 01:09 | that it's always tracking to the empty.
| | 01:12 | The tracking is kind of tricky in that
a camera access is X and Y is left and
| | 01:19 | right and up and down and Z is
toward whatever it's looking at.
| | 01:24 | So what we want to do is we want to
align, using the -Z axis, so that the -Z
| | 01:30 | points towards the object, and
up for camera is the Y rotation.
| | 01:38 | If we wanted this camera to track on
its side, we could just do X and now the
| | 01:42 | camera is flipped over on its
side, to take like a portrait view.
| | 01:46 | Here it's going to take a landscape view.
| | 01:49 | The influence, which can be
animated, is also pretty important.
| | 01:53 | In that the camera wants
to face a certain direction.
| | 01:57 | If I change this down to 0, I can see
that the camera really wants to be totally
| | 02:02 | upside down on the ground.
| | 02:04 | So that's no good.
| | 02:05 | But what we can do is increase this
influence and eventually it will come to
| | 02:09 | face the empty in the middle.
| | 02:13 | So if this was a camera that was
walking through space and looking down the
| | 02:18 | street and a pretty girl happened to
walk by and it caught its eye, then it
| | 02:23 | could track to that person's face by
increasing the influence over time and
| | 02:29 | then decrease over time as the girl
pass by and the camera resumed its normal orientation.
| | 02:36 | With Armatures you use this TrackTo
orientation to get the eyes to focus on a
| | 02:42 | particular object that's
hanging out there in front.
| | 02:44 | Very often you'll see in armatures an
empty or some kind of a bone or something
| | 02:49 | out there in front of the face of the
object so that the eyes have something
| | 02:54 | to look at.
| | 02:55 | So that's how you make an object face
and TrackTo some other object in Blender.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Following a path| 00:00 | In CG, you can't simply tell your
characters to meander around; you have to
| | 00:03 | give them specific direction.
| | 00:05 | One of the ways you can give them
direction instead of just manually keyframing
| | 00:09 | their location is to have them follow a path.
| | 00:13 | In this case, I have the standard
Lighting Rigs File and the camera,
| | 00:19 | as we discussed tracks to the center,
but as we proceed through the animation,
| | 00:24 | you will see that it spins around
and it's following this path.
| | 00:28 | There aren't actually any
IPO curves for this at all.
| | 00:31 | What I have done is I have created
this zero circle called path.005 and I
| | 00:37 | have told the camera to follow it by
entering the name of the path right here
| | 00:42 | in path.005 in the Target Object.
| | 00:46 | Now the other way, I could do this is
to set the camera to follow this path and
| | 00:52 | if it wasn't constrained to look at the
Empty in the middle, I could change this
| | 00:56 | to Y and now notice how the camera
rotates, so that it maintains a constant
| | 01:04 | offset or viewpoint as it
spins around the circle.
| | 01:08 | So this is sort of like looking on a
merry-go-round, looking forward as we go
| | 01:12 | around and around, and
that's what the curve followed us.
| | 01:15 | Let's say you are animating a hover car
and it's going over some bumpy ground,
| | 01:20 | would you want to use CurveFollow, so
that the car twists and turns and follows
| | 01:25 | the contour of the ground.
| | 01:26 | Now this path is designated as a path
by coming over here to the Editing panels
| | 01:34 | and under the Curve and Surface, I have
enabled CurvePath and this enables this
| | 01:40 | curve, which is standard
Bezier Curve, to function as a path.
| | 01:44 | The PathLength here at 100 frames
determines the amount of frames that this
| | 01:50 | camera or anything that follows this
path will need in order to fully traverse
| | 01:56 | one circuit of the path.
| | 01:58 | So if I want to make this spin
around faster or slower, I would change
| | 02:02 | the PathLength here.
| | 02:04 | This Blue dotted line that you see
here indicates a relationship between the
| | 02:09 | path and this object.
| | 02:11 | So that's the way you can very quickly
animate objects to move through 3D space
| | 02:17 | by having them follow a predefined path.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Mimicking an existing animation| 00:00 | So in addition to finding it's own path,
you can have one object, shadow or
| | 00:05 | follow another object as well.
| | 00:08 | So in this animation we have Suzanne
and she is jumping around and she rotates
| | 00:15 | and she reaches the apex of her ascent
and then descends down and lands gently
| | 00:20 | back on the ground like the
true ballerina that she is.
| | 00:24 | Now if we wanted this object to follow
her precisely, we could just Shift-click
| | 00:30 | on the two and make the Cube a child
of Suzanne and now as Suzanne takes off,
| | 00:38 | the object is offset from Suzanne
according to her access and so that's why the
| | 00:45 | box's location and rotation is a
little different but it's following the same
| | 00:50 | path that Suzanne is.
| | 00:52 | So, if, you were looking at this, this
is sort of like a break dancer, when they
| | 00:56 | do that serpentine kind of motion and so
we are going to just go ahead and do an
| | 00:59 | Alt+P to remove that parenting.
| | 01:03 | The other way to make this Cube
follow Suzanne is to add a Copy
| | 01:08 | Location Constraint.
| | 01:09 | When we enter the Copy Location
Constraint, we need to go ahead and enter in the
| | 01:15 | name of the object that we want this
Cube to follow, in this case Suzanne and
| | 01:21 | now the cube will follow and Copy
the Location in X, Y and Z according to
| | 01:27 | whatever Suzanne does.
| | 01:28 | Now if we wanted to go ahead and
knock off the X then, now as Suzanne moves
| | 01:34 | through time and space and goes up
and down and over, the Cube only goes up
| | 01:40 | and down.
| | 01:41 | We can also just offset the
Cube from its initial position.
| | 01:45 | So I just grab the Cube here and
we'll put it over here, lets say.
| | 01:49 | And now the location is copied but
notice that the Cube doesn't rotate even
| | 01:53 | though Suzanne is rotating.
| | 01:55 | I can change the Influence to here down,
to like 50% or so and so now as Suzanne
| | 02:01 | moves around, she is like on
a rubber leash to the block.
| | 02:05 | So this would be like if your Doll was
on the leash and this is a center block
| | 02:09 | that it's tied to, and even though if
she is hopping around the Cube doesn't
| | 02:13 | move nearly as much.
| | 02:15 | We can also add on additional
Constraints like Copying the Rotation and
| | 02:18 | the Scale as well.
| | 02:20 | The other way to have an object
mimic of the action of another is through
| | 02:25 | copying the IPO curves.
| | 02:27 | Now Suzanne here has an IPO curve right
here and we'll call it Suzanne and it's
| | 02:33 | defined by a bunch of keys, as with
almost everything else in Blender things are
| | 02:40 | sharable, Blender believes in sharing.
| | 02:43 | So what we can do is come over here
and select the Cube and then instead of
| | 02:48 | adding a new IPO curve, we
can go ahead and select Suzanne.
| | 02:54 | Now the Cube will have the exact same
path as Suzanne and as soon as, we change
| | 03:00 | frames it's going to be
doing that exact Copying again.
| | 03:04 | The new things about IPO curves is it's
really easy to make a single user copy
| | 03:08 | just like with everything else in
Blender that's shared, we can just click here
| | 03:12 | on the number and make a
single user copy of this Cube.
| | 03:16 | Let's say if we want to erase the X
channel, select the X curve and delete it,
| | 03:22 | move the Cube over here and now once we
have select all the other channels, we
| | 03:28 | have a rotation and location curve that
follows the original Suzanne but except
| | 03:37 | that it's not moving in the X direction.
| | 03:39 | So that's the way you can make one
object mimic the animation of another object.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the grease pencil| 00:00 | A really cool feature that was
just added to Blender is called the
| | 00:03 | grease pencil.
| | 00:04 | In the old days we use to actually use
Grease Pencils and they were like wax,
| | 00:08 | pieces of stick inside of a plastic
holder and you used to use them for drawing
| | 00:12 | on glass and Radar screens and
plotting tables and things like that.
| | 00:17 | So if we come here and we want to go
View > Grease Pencil and the Grease Pencil
| | 00:22 | is a way of drawing per frame.
| | 00:25 | So we are going to start of on Frame
1 here, and we are going to click Use
| | 00:29 | Grease Pencil and go into Draw Mode.
| | 00:32 | Now, you have a bunch of layers and you
can have different colors of layers and
| | 00:35 | stuff like that and I'm
going to just add one layer here.
| | 00:38 | Pick a nice little color, something
that has contrast that you can see, that is
| | 00:43 | into drawing and like that.
| | 00:45 | And now we just want to say okay.
| | 00:48 | As we start to watch this video, let's
see what happens to her eyes and notice
| | 00:53 | how she blinks and the Opacity and the
Thickness of the Pen is controlled here.
| | 00:59 | And so as she blinks, she is looking
around and she starts to open her mouth
| | 01:03 | and as her mouth reaches maximum
opening, I'm going to go ahead and trace her
| | 01:08 | jaw line.
| | 01:09 | Now, what I'm doing I'm
just studying this animation.
| | 01:13 | I want to see how things change over time.
| | 01:16 | This kind of a way of pointing out what
the differences are and as I draw this
| | 01:22 | second shape, the first arrow goes away
and then I can draw my next shape here,
| | 01:29 | so I can see as the things change and
mark up the animation or in this case this
| | 01:35 | video, and then I can do
the same thing over here.
| | 01:39 | So, lets say if I right here, I want
to start the blink right here, so now I
| | 01:44 | want to go ahead and View Grease Pencil,
Use Grease Pencil, Go into Draw Mode
| | 01:50 | and I can also do a 3D view too.
| | 01:52 | But we'll just use like a nice bright
Red color, we'll say we want to start the
| | 01:58 | blink and after the blink, we want to
start the A. So we can also then zoom out
| | 02:09 | and like say look, we want
this body line to go this way.
| | 02:13 | We want the breathe more, and breathe
up and so this is the way of just marking
| | 02:19 | up some animations, so that later on
when we go and we have an idea of what to
| | 02:24 | do in order to refine our animation.
| | 02:27 | These Grease Pencil layers are saved
in a sub directory underneath your Blend
| | 02:32 | folder, so if you start to see some
Grease Pencil folder is coming that's what
| | 02:37 | being saved in those folders.
| | 02:39 | So that's the way, you can use
Grease Pencil to both study, mark-up and
| | 02:44 | communicate between let's say the
director or maybe other members of the team as
| | 02:49 | to ways in which to improve or
observe great things in the animation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
6. SimulationUnderstanding particle systems| 00:00 | For many things in this world, it's
simply just not feasible to either create
| | 00:04 | a mesh model for each individual thing,
like individual smoke particles, or
| | 00:10 | you know you want to create some
special effects like we have running here,
| | 00:12 | which are some energy ball thing that
focuses around the actors hand and then
| | 00:17 | it shoots out.
| | 00:19 | So the purpose of this video is to
show you what those are, and how you get
| | 00:23 | to them and like that.
| | 00:24 | So first, there's a couple of
different contexts down here.
| | 00:27 | We're going to show you later
the Game Engine or Logic Context.
| | 00:33 | That's where we have the Bullet
Physics Library and we can actually use that
| | 00:37 | library to remake accurate physical
simulations of objects in our scene.
| | 00:44 | The second one then is also here under Object.
| | 00:48 | We have three sub contexts.
| | 00:51 | The last one is called Particles and
this is where you access the Particle
| | 00:56 | System, and that's what going on over
here in this simulation that was running.
| | 01:01 | We also have Soft Bodies, which
are up here in this sub context under
| | 01:06 | Physics button.
| | 01:08 | And when you have an object and you
enable Soft Bodies, you can then start to
| | 01:13 | work with how things jiggle.
| | 01:15 | Then we also have Cloths, and we're
going to be doing a cape for Captain
| | 01:20 | Knowledge, using the Cloth
simulation to simulate fabrics, latex, mylars,
| | 01:27 | leathers, and that kind of thing.
| | 01:29 | Then we also have Fluids,
which is accessed down here.
| | 01:33 | When you enable Fluids, we can
simulate water, blood, maple syrup, oil,
| | 01:39 | goops, and alien spit.
| | 01:42 | Lastly, then all of these things the
Particles, the Fluids, the Cloth and
| | 01:46 | everything, they collide with other things.
| | 01:49 | Those other things we need to mark as
colliders by enabling Collisions here, and
| | 01:55 | we'll be getting into some of
these settings later on too.
| | 01:59 | So these are all accessed through
the Object context in your Properties
| | 02:04 | window and then either the Physics
buttons or Particle buttons, here that
| | 02:09 | reveal the sets of panels.
| | 02:11 | But the main purpose of this video was
just to show you how to access all of
| | 02:15 | these different panels and where
they're hidden away inside of Blender.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with game engine physics| 00:00 | When we get into animation
we want realistic animation.
| | 00:03 | A lot of times if there's a scene
involving many different objects that are
| | 00:07 | colliding and banging into one another,
you simply just can't keyframe them by
| | 00:11 | hand, and so we have this computer here,
so why don't we use it to simulate what
| | 00:15 | happens in the real world when things
bounce off one another, fall on the
| | 00:19 | ground and do all those new things.
| | 00:22 | So, Blender has what's called the
Game Engine and it's accessed here.
| | 00:26 | First we need a world to operate in,
and something for things to hit.
| | 00:31 | So select this ground plane and now,
I'm just going to go ahead into View >
| | 00:34 | Properties and turn off the Grid Floor.
| | 00:36 | It's kind of distracting.
| | 00:40 | So here we have this Floor.
| | 00:42 | It's an object called Floor
appropriately, and what we want to do is make this
| | 00:47 | an Actor in the Game Engine.
| | 00:49 | The Game Engine is invoked first of
all by pressing P with your mouse cursor
| | 00:53 | in the 3-D view.
| | 00:56 | When that happens the Blender kicks in
the high gear and provides you with an
| | 01:01 | interactive simulation of whatever
it is you setup to do, in this case we
| | 01:05 | haven't setup anything so
everything is kind of hanging out there.
| | 01:08 | So you press Escape to stop the Game Engine.
| | 01:11 | So P to start and Escape to stop.
| | 01:15 | So, what we've done is we've told the
Game Engine that this is going to be an
| | 01:18 | Actors in our simulation and then we
can select this cube here and say okay,
| | 01:23 | it's not going to be Static but
it's going to be a Dynamic, Rigid Body.
| | 01:28 | So this is going to be like a crate.
| | 01:29 | And when we do that, whole bunch of
other options become available now to where
| | 01:33 | like we can set the Mass
of the object in kilograms.
| | 01:36 | So let's say it's a 5.00 kilogram object.
| | 01:39 | It has a Radius of 1.00.
| | 01:41 | It's a unit cube.
| | 01:42 | You can see here its dimensions, 2.000
on each side, so it's a one unit cube.
| | 01:47 | And this sets up the envelope for what
Blender is going to use to detect when
| | 01:53 | this box has actually hit something.
| | 01:55 | And when it hits something, it can
have some inertia to it so, we can Damp in
| | 02:00 | the location and Rotation of it.
| | 02:03 | So, now when we come up here and we
press P, Blender simulates the box flumping
| | 02:08 | down to the ground, until
it hits that ground plane.
| | 02:11 | Press Escape so now we can do the
same thing for the other box and get some
| | 02:15 | interaction going on here.
| | 02:18 | So, let's enter 10.00 for the Mass,
and let's have the dampening it a little
| | 02:23 | bit, so that it acts like a little
bit so that it acts like a really heavy
| | 02:25 | dense object.
| | 02:26 | So now when we press P after selecting Bounds.
| | 02:33 | Now we have one box falls and then the
other box falls and the other one rolls
| | 02:36 | and knocks it over and rolls off.
| | 02:38 | And we don't have any dampening set on
that so it's just going to keep rolling.
| | 02:42 | So, that's how we'd setup this
simulation, now what we can do that is
| | 02:47 | really cool!
| | 02:48 | We can tell Blender to record the Game
Physics to an IPO and what happens if
| | 02:54 | we do this after we run the simulation
which we just ran, we now have an IPO
| | 03:01 | for that cube.
| | 03:04 | So, if we switch over here to the IPO
window, you can see that Blender has
| | 03:08 | created for as long as I was running
that simulation which was 1000 frames.
| | 03:13 | This IPO which now even if we just
take this completely off of this box and
| | 03:19 | apply it to Captain Knowledge, he
would be falling to the ground and he would
| | 03:24 | follow this very same path.
| | 03:27 | So that's a quick way to use the Game
Engine, to record a physically accurate
| | 03:32 | IPO curve that you can use in your
animation either for the object that your
| | 03:36 | animating directly or you can even
swap out and save this as a falling-roll
| | 03:43 | kind of animation.
| | 03:46 | And now you have this IPO that you
can then apply to any other object in
| | 03:49 | your Blender scene.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Spewing particles| 00:00 | The particle system on Blender recently
got a complete rewrite, and it's just an
| | 00:05 | amazing thing to work with.
| | 00:08 | I can go on probably for hours on this
thing, but it was used to create all of
| | 00:13 | the hair on all of the
creatures in Big Buck Bunny.
| | 00:16 | It has been used to simulate smoke and
fire and ash and all sorts of things,
| | 00:21 | and we are going to touch on the basic
essentials of using the particle system
| | 00:25 | in Blender.
| | 00:26 | What we have here is this box that we
recorded dropping and it's not the part
| | 00:32 | of the game engine anymore, but it does
have the Ipo that recorded and assigned
| | 00:39 | to it.
| | 00:40 | So that's what's causing it to fall.
| | 00:41 | But what we have done over here
is access the particle systems.
| | 00:45 | Let's run through it real quick.
| | 00:47 | There is six major panels of
controls for the basic particle system.
| | 00:53 | So let me just click the X here to
delete this particle system, so we can
| | 00:56 | start New.
| | 00:57 | There are a couple of rules
to using the particle system.
| | 01:00 | Number one is you have to start at the
beginning, you can't jump into the middle
| | 01:04 | of a particle system, because it has to
start at the beginning and work its way
| | 01:08 | forward based on what it knows, and
where everything is, and then where each
| | 01:12 | particle is, and then advance to the
next frame and compute there those particle
| | 01:16 | should be on that frame.
| | 01:17 | So you can't jump into frame 10,
because it doesn't have a frame 9.
| | 01:21 | So when you're first are recording and
setting up the physics thing, be sure not
| | 01:25 | to use the Up and Down arrow when
you are jumping through your animation,
| | 01:28 | otherwise, the physics system is going
to give up, and you are not going to see
| | 01:31 | any particles, and you are going to
think it's broken, but it's not really
| | 01:33 | broken, you just have to advance frame by frame.
| | 01:36 | So we select the box and
we are going to go Add New.
| | 01:39 | Now over here we see a bunch of controls
that come up to play when we first just
| | 01:44 | click on a particle system,
and add new particle system.
| | 01:48 | Each object can have many particle systems.
| | 01:52 | So I could have this thing smoking,
burning, spitting off sparks, casting-off
| | 01:59 | energy balls and collapsing into one
big flaming heap, if I wanted to, each of
| | 02:04 | those would be a different particle system.
| | 02:06 | What we are going over in this video is
the emitter particle system, and that's
| | 02:10 | the system that emits particles.
| | 02:13 | Here we setup the number of particles
that are going to be emitted in total.
| | 02:18 | When we want the particles to start
emitting, we could have this thing not catch
| | 02:23 | on fire until let's say
frame 1000 of the animation.
| | 02:26 | So we would set that to 1000.
| | 02:28 | When we want it to stop emitting
particles, and then how long each particle
| | 02:34 | should last before it kind of
fades off, into nothingness.
| | 02:38 | So in this case, we have 1000 particles.
| | 02:41 | So on average, over 100 frames, we
are going to have about 10 particles
| | 02:45 | emitted each frame.
| | 02:47 | So if I just right arrow once to
frame 2 here, you can see that about 10
| | 02:52 | particles have started.
| | 02:54 | These particles right here are going
to be individually tracked and they are
| | 02:58 | going to stay alive for 50 frames, and
so then at 51, wherever they are, they
| | 03:02 | are just going to drop off
of the face of the earth.
| | 03:05 | Now notice that they are
all emitting from one plain.
| | 03:08 | When I go to the next frame, then all
of these particles are being emitted in a
| | 03:13 | fairly uniform manner;
| | 03:16 | you may or may not want that.
| | 03:17 | You can click Random here, and
then they will be randomly generated.
| | 03:21 | Notice now I have to go back to
frame 1 showing down here in the
| | 03:25 | lower-right-hand-corner, I've got to
go back to frame 1 whenever I make a
| | 03:27 | change, and then restart again.
| | 03:30 | Now the particles are emitted from
random places across the whole surface of the
| | 03:35 | box, and that's because I
have Faces selected here.
| | 03:39 | I can emit from just the corners if
I want, or wherever the vertices are.
| | 03:43 | Now by default the particles don't go anywhere.
| | 03:47 | Usually, they don't want to
be spewing out from the box.
| | 03:51 | So in that case, we want to eject
them and give them a little bit of a
| | 03:55 | normal speed.
| | 03:56 | Again, normal as in
perpendicular to the face of the object.
| | 04:01 | So now I'm just going to give it like
1, so we can really see what happens.
| | 04:05 | So we go back to frame 1, and now
as we advance out, you can see the
| | 04:09 | particles spewing outwards.
| | 04:12 | And then they will continue to spew
outwards until they are affected by some
| | 04:16 | other dynamic that's going on in the world.
| | 04:19 | If we want to simulate that these
things are hot, we can accelerate them up
| | 04:23 | into the Z direction, and we can come
back here, and now they are actually
| | 04:30 | flying up off the screen.
| | 04:32 | So now that simulates smoke.
| | 04:34 | Now I'm visualizing this as points, but
we can visualize them as little crosses,
| | 04:41 | we can -- let's say go back here.
| | 04:43 | So now you can see that they are crosses,
or if you want to go little bit of an
| | 04:47 | accurate representation.
| | 04:48 | If you are doing smoke, of course,
you want to use circles to simulate a
| | 04:53 | little puffball.
| | 04:56 | When we are drawing them,
we can draw the velocity.
| | 04:58 | And the size.
| | 04:59 | And each particle has in fact, an
individual number, so we can even look at each
| | 05:05 | individual particle to see where
it's at and control how we visualize the
| | 05:10 | particles in the 3D space.
| | 05:15 | Next, each particle can have some
actions that when it hits something, like if
| | 05:20 | it hit this box, it could die to
simulate being absorbed by the other material.
| | 05:26 | That can also stick to the other material.
| | 05:28 | So if you have like a foaming glue,
then once it hits that other object, it
| | 05:33 | would actually stick to it, and
finally particles can actually have children.
| | 05:38 | So you can have particles spewing out
other particles as well, and that's kind
| | 05:42 | of an easy way to get a lot of
particles going on, and here we have ten
| | 05:48 | particles for every major particle.
| | 05:51 | It gives a lot more of a full
simulation when you are trying to simulate a lot
| | 05:56 | of smoke, and dust, and things like that.
| | 05:59 | Notice how fast this thing is.
| | 06:02 | It's amazingly efficient.
| | 06:04 | So you can crank this up to 10,000, 100
,000, 50,000 million particles and be
| | 06:09 | able to run realistic simulations.
| | 06:11 | Of course, as you get more, it's
going to get more dense, which you may or
| | 06:16 | may not want.
| | 06:17 | I was watching some movies over
the weekend, and the dust effect was
| | 06:20 | pretty light.
| | 06:21 | Most smokes and mists and other kinds
of particle effects, you can actually
| | 06:25 | see through them.
| | 06:26 | So you don't really need a ton of
particles to be absolutely 100% convincing.
| | 06:33 | Finally then, after you are all done
and you have set it up and you really like
| | 06:37 | the way it is, you can save a lot of
time by baking the simulation for a certain
| | 06:42 | frame range, and once you do that,
Blender will kind of take over computer and
| | 06:46 | compute that and lock in the
positions of these particles.
| | 06:50 | If I change this box over to here, well,
the Ipo is going to overwrite I. But if
| | 06:55 | the box is over here, just sitting in
the corner smoldering, each time I advance
| | 06:58 | through the frames, Blender would
recalculate the particles from there.
| | 07:02 | Once I bake those particle positions
are locked into the place, just like we
| | 07:06 | locked in the position of this box,
we would lock-in the position of the
| | 07:10 | particles, and then it takes a lot less
compute time, the next time that we run
| | 07:15 | the simulation, because Blender
can just pull from that baking.
| | 07:19 | That covers the major panels in the
emitter particle system in Blender.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Guiding particles| 00:00 | This video talks about how to
control the particles once we have now
| | 00:04 | established the emitter system.
| | 00:06 | So now that our particle system is
build, as you can see, it just creates a
| | 00:10 | standard plume of particles in the
standard up direction, which is cute, but not
| | 00:16 | really very realistic.
| | 00:17 | So let's go ahead and add some forces,
and force fields that will control
| | 00:22 | the particles.
| | 00:23 | As with all particle systems, you
have to have a shared layer between the
| | 00:28 | particle system mesh that actually
emits the particles and the force field or
| | 00:35 | any other object that you're going to
use to try to control those particles.
| | 00:39 | So if we select here, we're going to
use a big old wind plane here, like a big
| | 00:43 | old fan and this fan is down here on Layer 11.
| | 00:47 | As is this little box in back.
| | 00:51 | And then the Emitter
itself is on Layers 1 and 11.
| | 00:58 | So when we render, we're going to
render layers 1 but not layer 11.
| | 01:04 | So these force field planes will not
show up in the final render, but yet they
| | 01:09 | can still have effect on the particles.
| | 01:12 | So the first thing we want
to do is add a wind effect.
| | 01:15 | All the effects are down here, under
the Physics buttons, under Fields, just go
| | 01:20 | ahead and click Wind.
| | 01:22 | The Strength of the Wind, whether it's
a soft breeze or a gale force hurricane,
| | 01:26 | 0.5 is a nice gentle breeze.
| | 01:28 | As the wind blows these smoke
particles into Mancandy's face.
| | 01:33 | I'm using the Mancandy face in mesh right here.
| | 01:37 | A big shot out to the developer who
brought that to life and has release that
| | 01:41 | to the public demand.
| | 01:42 | I encourage you to look it up,
and download it and use the rig.
| | 01:46 | As the wind blows over the back of the
Mancandy, it's going to create a vacuum,
| | 01:51 | which we can simulate using a Magnetic field.
| | 01:52 | Again, the Strength is the same and
then these over here control whether or
| | 01:58 | not particles are certain distance
away from the field are affected by the
| | 02:04 | force field.
| | 02:06 | Last but not least, above the head,
whenever you have smoke coming out of a
| | 02:11 | round circular thing, you get a
vortex field kind of going on, because of
| | 02:16 | vortex forces that happen.
| | 02:17 | So I'm going to scale this up a little
bit, maybe make this a little bigger.
| | 02:20 | So now you can see that it's pretty
much right above the trashcan and we
| | 02:25 | just select Vortex.
| | 02:27 | A Strength of 5 is pretty strong and
with the Vortex field, I often like to set
| | 02:32 | up a distance so that as the smoke
comes up, out of the can, it is caught then
| | 02:38 | and starts to swirl right around in
here, so this number here is the radius.
| | 02:44 | So we're going to go 1, 2, 3, 4, up 5.
| | 02:47 | So let's set this to 5 units and
this little yellow circle shows you the
| | 02:54 | radius of influence.
| | 02:56 | So now, as the particles come up out of
the can, they're going to be caught by
| | 02:59 | the wind and immediately blown and then
the vortex will start to grab them and
| | 03:04 | as they move their way down wind, then
this magnet field will catch some of them
| | 03:09 | and you end up with the simulation that
we can show in the movie by coming over
| | 03:17 | here to Compositing.
| | 03:20 | And by watching the movie, we can see
the different forces that come into play.
| | 03:25 | As the smoke comes up out of the can is
caught by these invisible force fields
| | 03:33 | that is blown down wind.
| | 03:35 | So that's an example of how you control
particles that once they are emitted by
| | 03:40 | using the different force
fields that are available in Blender.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating reactions and collisions with particle systems| 00:00 | Now in an advanced particle system and
an advanced simulation and when you're
| | 00:04 | doing professional work, not only does
this one selected box emit particles like
| | 00:09 | fire and smoke and flame and sparks,
but it will catch something else on fire
| | 00:14 | and that's called a reactor system
when you have another box, like say the
| | 00:18 | second box right here.
| | 00:20 | That's going to catch on fire because
it gets hit by particles from the first
| | 00:24 | box and that's called reactor.
| | 00:26 | So we come over here and add a particle
system, just by clicking on the Add New
| | 00:32 | button and we're going to
change this from Emitter to Reactor.
| | 00:35 | Now the first thing we had to do is tell
this Reactor system what particles it's
| | 00:39 | going to react here.
| | 00:40 | So, if we select this first cube, it's Cube 003.
| | 00:45 | So what we want to say is that when
this box is hit by particles from Cube 003,
| | 00:53 | notice that was red and now it turns gray.
| | 00:56 | That means everything is cool.
| | 00:58 | Now when this box is hit with
particles from Cube 3, it will start emitting
| | 01:04 | particles and if we press Ctrl+A, we
can verify that that as the box starts to
| | 01:09 | fall then the other particles start
to hit it, it catches on fire as well.
| | 01:13 | Then press Escape to stop the
simulation and let's go through the
| | 01:17 | Reactor Settings.
| | 01:18 | They are almost exactly the same as the
Emitters, except that instead of saying
| | 01:22 | how many particles to emit over the
life of the simulation, now when it's hit,
| | 01:28 | how many particles should emit over
the whole course of the simulation.
| | 01:33 | But when they start and end, should
they react on the death of a particle or on
| | 01:39 | the collision or just when
the other particles get near?
| | 01:42 | So if you had some sparks getting
near, flammable liquid, you would use
| | 01:47 | the near.
| | 01:48 | In this case we're going to use Collision.
| | 01:50 | When one particle hits, does one
other particle get spawned or can you have
| | 01:54 | multiple particles all of a sudden
bursting into flame and when those particles
| | 01:59 | are created then what's the
lifespan of those particles?
| | 02:03 | When the particles are emitted, then
what kind of physics are they subject to
| | 02:07 | and how should they be spewed out?
| | 02:09 | So we'll go ahead and get
this a little of a Normal.
| | 02:12 | Normal as you recall is
direction away from the face.
| | 02:15 | The Visualization Extras and Children
are all the same as with an Emitter and
| | 02:20 | the big panel is the same too as we
run our simulation and we like what we're
| | 02:25 | doing and we like what we see.
| | 02:27 | Then what we can do is bake that
simulation so that the particles are locked in.
| | 02:33 | When we make any changes, we have
to go back to frame 1 and restart the
| | 02:41 | simulation and we have to make sure
that there's a shared layer, that the boxes
| | 02:45 | are on at least one shared layer, so
that the particles can detect when they are
| | 02:51 | hit by one and then they start
going off from the other ones.
| | 02:55 | If we don't like the pattern in which
the particles are emitted, just like the
| | 02:59 | Emitter, we can go ahead and click
Random here and have them evenly generated
| | 03:05 | from the entire box.
| | 03:10 | So Reactor systems and Blender allow
particles to be spawned dynamically.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating hair and fur| 00:00 | Hair and fur is one of the holy
grails of computer graphics and Blender
| | 00:04 | recently got a huge upgrade and a
particle system that will enable the rendering
| | 00:09 | of millions of hairs.
| | 00:11 | If you download the Big Buck Bunny
posters, you can zoom in on the rabbit and
| | 00:16 | you can see down to individual hairs.
| | 00:20 | So I'll like to do a tutorial on how
to set up a hair and comb hair and
| | 00:24 | trim hair.
| | 00:25 | So we have the squirrel and you can
see here over on the Modifiers panels
| | 00:30 | that in addition to these other
modifiers, he has three particle systems
| | 00:34 | assigned to this one mesh.
| | 00:37 | That means that there is three
particles that are going to be emitted, and
| | 00:41 | they're named fur, tail and whiskers.
| | 00:43 | So let's look at these in detail.
| | 00:46 | Coming over here to the Particle Systems,
instead of an Emitter, we just choose Hair.
| | 00:54 | Then when we do that, then all of these
are pre-filled in with a lot of presets.
| | 00:58 | So let's go through each of the panels.
| | 01:01 | They're much the same as the Emitter
system, because you're emitting hair
| | 01:05 | instead of emitting particles.
| | 01:07 | First of all is the basic number of
particles and how flexible each of the
| | 01:10 | hairs are.
| | 01:12 | Whether the hair is emitted
in even fashion or random?
| | 01:17 | When the hair is blown around and
as it grows, what kind of forces does
| | 01:21 | it subject to?
| | 01:22 | Here is Normal it's 0.2 and that's
what you use to control the length of
| | 01:26 | the hair.
| | 01:27 | If you use a larger Normal, than
the hair is going to be longer.
| | 01:30 | So you're going to have a long
strawberry blonde hair or you can have low
| | 01:35 | short fur.
| | 01:36 | Hair can be subject to global
effects, just to grow out and down in
| | 01:40 | the position.
| | 01:42 | Under Visualization, we have
how we want to see it in 3D View.
| | 01:47 | What we want drawn, in this case,
hair is normally drawn as a Path, so that
| | 01:51 | we can see it.
| | 01:53 | I'm going to go ahead and
enable up here in 3D View.
| | 01:55 | So you can actually see the
hair, in this case on his tail.
| | 01:59 | If you have a lower graphics
card, you want to turn that off.
| | 02:03 | Hair has a special Strand renderer that
we use for rendering strands and the key
| | 02:08 | to a really good hair is the material as well.
| | 02:13 | I would like to cover that after a little bit.
| | 02:16 | The only extra slide is the same as Emitters.
| | 02:19 | We can have the hair fall off.
| | 02:21 | It's something else.
| | 02:24 | Finally, we can have children and so
each hair can sprout other hair, and in
| | 02:30 | this case we have 50 hairs for
everyone of the original 3,000.
| | 02:36 | So as I promise, the
materials are very important.
| | 02:38 | So when you click on the Materials,
now we can see that for this fur, those
| | 02:42 | stands come up and they start from a
solid color, and then they fade out as
| | 02:47 | they reach to the tip.
| | 02:48 | That's very important for realistic fur.
| | 02:51 | The way you can check that out and see
how that happens is through the Textures.
| | 02:56 | I'm going to try to tear
off this panel down here.
| | 03:01 | The first Texture sets up a basic
stencil that controls the rest of
| | 03:05 | the textures.
| | 03:07 | The next one is the strand, which sets
up the Alpha value and if you look at
| | 03:11 | that, that's a blend texture that goes
from a solid black down to transparent.
| | 03:16 | So that controls how the fur fades
off as it gets longer and longer.
| | 03:20 | That's probably the most important texture.
| | 03:23 | I think to get in place.
| | 03:26 | Here is the colors that
we want to use for the fur.
| | 03:28 | So you can paint different colored fur
over the course of his body by using a
| | 03:33 | UV texture here.
| | 03:35 | Next up is the tip mask, and
that's used to mask off the tip of the
| | 03:40 | hair particle.
| | 03:42 | Then here is the fur color, for the
color at the top of the fur, and that has
| | 03:47 | mapped the color as well.
| | 03:49 | The rest controls the specularity and
the roughness of the hair appearance.
| | 03:55 | So you can have very frizzy hair, you
can have soft hair, and you can have hair
| | 04:00 | that's speckled, hair that
varies in color along its length.
| | 04:05 | Very often hair isn't the same color,
and it starts off with the roots at one
| | 04:08 | color and then ends up being
a different color at the tip.
| | 04:11 | So that's the way you can control,
not only the color of the hair as it
| | 04:15 | goes over the body.
| | 04:16 | But also the color of the
hair as it goes along its length.
| | 04:21 | So that's essentially hair in Blender.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Grooming hair and fur| 00:00 | So now that we have a hair system
going on, one of the questions is okay, now
| | 00:04 | what do we do to make it
not look like a puff ball?
| | 00:07 | So we are going to take this squirrel
here, and we are going to come over into
| | 00:11 | the Particle Mode, and
select the particles for his tail.
| | 00:15 | So here's the Hair system that we setup
for his tail and what I really need to
| | 00:20 | do is have a good enough graphics card
to where you can click on here to enable
| | 00:25 | the particle system to display the
hairs in your 3D view in real-time.
| | 00:30 | And so, even on this computer, it took
a little bit for all those hairs to be
| | 00:33 | filled in, because there was actually
3000 hairs, and you can play with the
| | 00:37 | visualizations here to control
how many of these are displayed.
| | 00:42 | But now that we have the hair up here,
we can go into a special Particle Mode,
| | 00:48 | and when we go into Particle Mode,
it's sort of like an Edit Mode, but you
| | 00:52 | have combing and brushing, and hair
drying controls that I'm going to go over
| | 00:56 | right now.
| | 00:57 | First of all we have the Comb, and
you'll select the tool that you want to use
| | 01:02 | here on the different
particle systems that are available.
| | 01:06 | So you control them over here, I
just want to show you there is the
| | 01:09 | particle system.
| | 01:10 | So now we are working on the Tail, and
with the Comb tool, as we comb the hairs,
| | 01:17 | as I'm Left-clicking and dragging, it's
just like if we were brushing the hair.
| | 01:23 | Next, we can smooth the hair
out if it's kind of unruly.
| | 01:26 | It's just like taking your hand and
just smoothing them out, and as you rotate
| | 01:32 | and work in 3D View, you can
use your brush just as a tool.
| | 01:37 | We can go ahead and cut the hair,
change our tool to almost like a clipper,
| | 01:44 | and clip the hair.
| | 01:45 | Wherever the edge of your tool
touches the hairs, it cuts them off, and
| | 01:50 | varies the length there.
| | 01:52 | Here's how we change the size of
your tool to be very little, to make
| | 01:57 | very precise cuts.
| | 01:59 | You would use this like a little knife
or so, and the strength is from 1 to 10
| | 02:05 | of how much an effect it has.
| | 02:07 | So to make a really ratty looking tail,
we would set the strength down, and
| | 02:12 | click around, and then we get a lot
of random chewed up look, like he's had
| | 02:19 | a hard life.
| | 02:21 | We can go ahead and show the children,
if there's enough children and your
| | 02:25 | computer is strong enough, then we
can see all of the hairs that we are
| | 02:30 | working on.
| | 02:31 | The other tool is to make them longer,
so just by clicking in here, we are
| | 02:36 | growing the hairs out, and we are
making it like a really puffy tail, or we can
| | 02:43 | shrink them as well, sort of like the
cut, but it kind of is a smoother effect.
| | 02:49 | Again with the length, we have
the Size and Strength controls.
| | 02:54 | Puffing is sort of like with the hair
drier, where you just kind of take the
| | 02:57 | hair and you put static
electricity in it, if you will.
| | 03:00 | It just kind of makes it puffy.
| | 03:03 | So using these tools you can recreate
any modern hairstyle or even hairstyle
| | 03:08 | going back to the `60s.
| | 03:09 | It does take quite a bit of time
to smooth out the hair, and get hair
| | 03:14 | looking nice.
| | 03:16 | But once you do, you can affect
any kind of hairstyle in Blender.
| | 03:20 | So that's essentially how you use
this powerful feature in Blender to shape
| | 03:24 | and style hair.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Jiggling and squishing soft bodies| 00:00 | In real life everything has something in it.
| | 00:03 | And so when you push on the surface
of so many things they kind of bounce
| | 00:07 | back and they jiggle.
| | 00:08 | And jiggling and all of that neat stuff
in Blender is done with what's called
| | 00:13 | a Soft Body.
| | 00:14 | So the purpose of this tutorial is
to tell you how to setup a successful
| | 00:17 | Soft Body system.
| | 00:18 | What we've here is a ground
plain, and it's on layer 1.
| | 00:22 | And it's on the same layer as the cube.
| | 00:24 | So very important that they have the
same shared layer, just like with all of
| | 00:28 | the physical simulation features in Blender.
| | 00:32 | And what we want to do is
make this into like a trampoline.
| | 00:34 | So we'll enable Collisions, so that it
will be able to detect when it's being
| | 00:39 | collided with by other soft bodies.
| | 00:41 | And we are going to go ahead and make
that into Soft Body by clicking up here.
| | 00:45 | That's really all we have to do,
to setup a basic trampoline.
| | 00:49 | Now we are going to select the cube, and
also enable it to collide, because it's
| | 00:53 | going to collide with this soft body,
and we want it be able to bounce back, and
| | 00:57 | then we are going to turn it in to a Soft Body.
| | 00:59 | So let's go ahead and enable
Stiff Quads, and set it pretty stiff.
| | 01:04 | So we are going to set the Pull and the Push.
| | 01:06 | The Pull and the Push defines
the springiness of the edges.
| | 01:10 | So if you are pulling on something
like thread, when you push on it, it gives
| | 01:15 | way, but then when you pull on it, it
wants to snap back to its original length.
| | 01:21 | So it's got different springiness or
stiffness, depending on whether it's
| | 01:25 | being pulled or pushed.
| | 01:27 | In this case we are just going to make a
pretty tight kind of a rubber material,
| | 01:31 | and we are going to let it free float.
| | 01:33 | So we are not going to Use Goal, but on
the trampoline we do want to Use Goal.
| | 01:38 | So once we start the animation by
pressing Alt+A. Now Blender is going
| | 01:43 | through, and it's calculating based
on Gravity up there at 9.8 meters per
| | 01:46 | second, with a Mass of 1.
| | 01:49 | It's computing how fast in
real-time this cube would fall.
| | 01:54 | And as it falls, notice when it
contacts the trampoline, the edges are detected
| | 02:00 | that a collision has occurred, and the
cube deforms and changes shape to match
| | 02:06 | the impact of the rubber box on to the
trampoline, and the trampoline actually
| | 02:12 | then starts bouncing a little bit too.
| | 02:14 | Let me take this opportunity while
we are waiting for it to compute.
| | 02:18 | To explain that, the number in the
black box there is the frame number of
| | 02:22 | the animation.
| | 02:23 | So right now we are on frame 150 or so.
| | 02:27 | And that comes up every time you're
doing some sort of animation or rendering or
| | 02:32 | simulation or calculation
that might take some time.
| | 02:35 | And it's going to go from frame 1 to
the maximum number of frames that are set
| | 02:40 | in your Animation panel, for
however long your animation is.
| | 02:44 | By default I have set this to be 250
frames, which is about 10 seconds at
| | 02:50 | 25 frames per second.
| | 02:52 | So now after it's done through and
calculated everything, effectively now I
| | 02:57 | can replay really in fast in real-time
motion, just as fast as your computer
| | 03:01 | will let it go.
| | 03:03 | And we see the box come
down and kind of gets crunched.
| | 03:08 | Also what's really cool with the Soft
Body is that we can set this Plastic
| | 03:12 | setting over here, and this
permanently deforms the object once it collides
| | 03:17 | with something.
| | 03:18 | And this was a really popular feature
that was requested by a lot of users to be
| | 03:22 | able to simulate car
crashes, anything that wrecks.
| | 03:26 | Instead what's going to happen is
the box is going to try to spring back
| | 03:30 | into shape, but with the Plastic
setting up at 100, it stays deformed and in
| | 03:35 | the shape that you saw.
| | 03:37 | So that essentially getting
started with Soft Bodies and Soft Body
| | 03:40 | simulations in Blender.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Simulating cloth| 00:00 | An awesome feature of Blender that's
been three years in the making is Cloth,
| | 00:04 | and the ability to
simulate various kinds of Cloth.
| | 00:07 | When we're running a Cloth simulation,
we're going to turn this cape into
| | 00:10 | a leather cape.
| | 00:12 | The standard rules of simulations apply.
| | 00:15 | Mainly the cape has to be on a
shared layer with the other objects that
| | 00:19 | it's colliding with.
| | 00:20 | So if we press M, we see that the
cape is on layers 3, 12, and 13.
| | 00:25 | If we select the mesh, and press M, we
see that the mesh of Capitan Knowledge
| | 00:33 | is on layers 2 and 13.
| | 00:35 | So 13 is our shared layer in this case.
| | 00:38 | So now that we have checked the mesh,
we can select the cape and enable Cloth.
| | 00:43 | Now just like with Soft Bodies, we can
also pin the Cloth as well, and we'll get
| | 00:47 | into that in a little bit,
but let's go over these first.
| | 00:49 | We have some presets that we can select from.
| | 00:52 | And he wants a leather cape that just
fills in these values here, which is the
| | 00:56 | structural stiffness, and the bending
stiffness, which is if you took a piece of
| | 01:01 | rayon, or a piece of silk, or a piece
of cotton, or piece of leather, between
| | 01:06 | your two hands and you pulled it and
stretched it, and tried to bend it and
| | 01:09 | wrinkle it, it would work differently
based on the different kinds of cloth.
| | 01:13 | So that's what the stiffness sets up here.
| | 01:16 | Springiness and dampness says that if
we pull it apart, it doesn't want to come
| | 01:21 | back together again.
| | 01:22 | Like rubbery type materials, latex,
mylar and that kind of stuff, is
| | 01:27 | very springy.
| | 01:28 | In the air dampness setting, we have
a value that determines when the wind
| | 01:33 | blows, how much is it affected.
| | 01:35 | So if you have sheers or let's say a
fishnet kind of material, a fishnet
| | 01:40 | material would have a very low air
dampening versus a solid cloth would have
| | 01:44 | air dampening of 1.
| | 01:45 | The Quality of simulation determines
how long and how much compute power you
| | 01:50 | want to dedicate to performing the simulation.
| | 01:54 | So since this is a training tutorial,
I'm going to set this down to 4, and
| | 01:58 | that's what you standardly want to
do when you are first setting it up.
| | 02:01 | Start with a low quality setting,
revise, and tweak, and tune your settings,
| | 02:06 | and then eventually start cranking
the quality up to get a better quality
| | 02:09 | simulation.
| | 02:10 | Mass is the density of the fabric, how
heavy or thick it is, and then Gravity
| | 02:15 | is the direction of gravity, which in
this case is downward at 9.8 meters per
| | 02:19 | second.
| | 02:20 | Now we want to pin the cloth, but
in order to pin it, we need define
| | 02:24 | vertex group.
| | 02:25 | Let's tab into Edit Mode, and when
we pin the cloth, we have control over
| | 02:30 | whether or not that portion of the cloth
participates in the simulation and will
| | 02:34 | move or slide around.
| | 02:36 | Now in this particular case we have
the cape for Captain Knowledge, and it's
| | 02:40 | not going to slide around, especially
around near his clasp or anywhere near
| | 02:43 | his shoulders.
| | 02:44 | So let's go into Side view, and
define a vertex group that consist of those
| | 02:48 | vertices that make up the top of his
shoulder, by coming down here to Edit,
| | 02:54 | Vertex Groups, New, and we
are going to call it Shoulder.
| | 02:59 | And to find those vertexes to that Vertex Group.
| | 03:03 | Now when we tab out of Edit Mode, and
we come back to the Cloth presets, we can
| | 03:08 | now click pinning of cloth, and since
is the shoulder is the only vertex group
| | 03:12 | in the cape that comes up and
automatically is selected, we can vary the amount
| | 03:17 | of which this vertices groups are
pinned by adjusting the pin stiffness here.
| | 03:23 | We want the Cloth to detect when
it collides with other objects.
| | 03:27 | So we want to enable collisions, which
is always turned on by default, and then
| | 03:31 | we have a Collision Quality, another
quality indicator here that says how often
| | 03:36 | or how well it should check for
collisions with other objects.
| | 03:39 | And obviously you want to crank this up;
| | 03:41 | especially sometimes you will start to
see Cloth breakthroughs, where it will
| | 03:45 | breakthrough the mesh, because
the quality isn't high enough.
| | 03:47 | So if you just crank up the Quality
then, it will be able to detect that
| | 03:51 | a little better.
| | 03:52 | When it does collide with something,
what kind of Friction is involved in
| | 03:56 | between the two surfaces?
| | 03:58 | So I would like to set this up to
about 80, to say that when it does collide
| | 04:03 | with something, it pretty much sticks to it.
| | 04:04 | It doesn't just bounce right off again.
| | 04:07 | Silk has a very low coefficient of friction.
| | 04:10 | Leather has a very high coefficient,
because it's actually swayed on the
| | 04:13 | other side.
| | 04:15 | Finally we can enable self-collisions,
and that's where the Cloth can fold in
| | 04:19 | and on itself, and then when it
folds in on itself, it won't just pass
| | 04:23 | through itself.
| | 04:24 | It will detect itself and then not pass through.
| | 04:27 | It will instead bounce off or
just stop and then kind of unfold.
| | 04:33 | Under the Cloth Advance panel we
could enable some stiffness scaling and do
| | 04:36 | weight paint to define really
thicker pieces of the cloth, but that's
| | 04:41 | pretty advance stuff.
| | 04:43 | So that's really all we need to do.
| | 04:45 | Now what we need to check on is that
when we do the Bake, it's going to go
| | 04:49 | from frames 1 to 250.
| | 04:52 | If our simulation is longer, let's say
it's like 500 frames, we have to change
| | 04:56 | this to match the length of our animation.
| | 04:58 | So if we press Alt+A or on the
Apple keyboard Option+A, we'll run these
| | 05:02 | simulation through our Frame range, and
turn this mesh into a piece of a cloth,
| | 05:08 | for our animation range, which is 1 to 50.
| | 05:11 | So you have to keep these two ranges in
mind, you have your animation range, and
| | 05:16 | then you have your baking range.
| | 05:19 | So let's go ahead and press
Alt+A, Option+A on the Mac.
| | 05:24 | So once the simulation finishes, it
then starts playing over and over in the 3D
| | 05:28 | View, and you can see how
the cloth bends into forms.
| | 05:32 | You can stop the simulation at any
time and rotate the view and change your
| | 05:36 | perspective, and then just do an Alt+A
again, and if the Cloth has already been
| | 05:42 | computed and nothing is changed,
it can use that same Cache.
| | 05:46 | If you ever do change something, let's
say we started him walking or whatever,
| | 05:50 | we would have to come
over here and free the Cache.
| | 05:53 | When we were finally done and we like
the way it is and our character is moving,
| | 05:57 | and everything like that, then we want
to do our Final Bake, which is over here,
| | 06:02 | by clicking this Bake, and then
that locks in that simulation.
| | 06:07 | So that's how you do Cloth in Blender.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Simulating fluids| 00:00 | Fluids are an awesome thing to have
inside Blender and I'm very happy that we
| | 00:05 | have an awesome and a
great fluid simulation system.
| | 00:08 | Fluids are all around and they are
essential to any time you are creating any
| | 00:12 | kind of flowing water or a river or
the gigantic tide coming in and washing
| | 00:16 | away the island, you name it.
| | 00:19 | So to get started, we only have a
certain amount of time and so we need to
| | 00:24 | create what's called a domain.
| | 00:26 | And a domain is an area in which
the Fluid simulation will occur.
| | 00:31 | And I'm just going to go
ahead and create a huge cube.
| | 00:33 | Usually the domain is just a cube.
| | 00:35 | But it sets the limits and if the
fluid happens to get outside these limits,
| | 00:39 | it's just going to splash up against
the wall and it won't go any further.
| | 00:43 | It won't go outside that domain.
| | 00:45 | So to name the domain we want to go
ahead and just the change the name to Domain
| | 00:49 | here and designate it as such by
coming over here to our Buttons window and
| | 00:56 | selecting the Object, Physics
buttons, and go ahead and minimize these.
| | 01:03 | And so now we just enable Fluid.
| | 01:05 | Now we have kicked in the whole
Fluid simulation system inside Blender.
| | 01:10 | And let's mark this selected cube as The Domain.
| | 01:13 | Now this domain will later actually
become the fluid shape that occurs, so don't
| | 01:18 | get wigged out when this
thing disappears later on.
| | 01:21 | We have four sets of settings to
control the fluids essentially, all we need to
| | 01:26 | remember is that the Resolution here
is the primary driver in how long the
| | 01:32 | simulation is going to take, and what
kind of good quality results you are
| | 01:36 | going to get.
| | 01:37 | We have two modes, we have a Preview
Mode that we see and 3D view, and then we
| | 01:42 | have a Final Mode that's computed
when we actually do the final rendering.
| | 01:47 | So you can preview in a
very low resolution here.
| | 01:50 | Let's say 10, and while that gives you
a rough idea of what it's going to look
| | 01:55 | like in the Final render, it
doesn't give you an exact depiction.
| | 01:58 | It just helps you take less
time to run through the simulation.
| | 02:02 | We can also reverse the
Fluid simulation once it's done.
| | 02:05 | So you can kind of simulate fluid being
sucked up into a straw, if you want to
| | 02:10 | just run one simulation where the water
flows out the straw and into a puddle or
| | 02:14 | something like that, then by reversing
the frames, and the fluid will appear to
| | 02:17 | suck up into the straw.
| | 02:19 | Lastly, we want to make sure that
we have a path to our local and valid
| | 02:23 | directory to store a whole bunch of
information about this simulation.
| | 02:29 | And we want to have saved our blend
file somewhere on our hard drive, so that
| | 02:35 | the simulation knows where to
put some temporary working files.
| | 02:39 | The next thing we need is some fluid.
| | 02:41 | So let's go ahead and add a ball of
fluid in the shape of an Icosphere.
| | 02:47 | And we are going to name this Fluid.
| | 02:50 | And this is the initial or the starting
shape of the fluid, and this shape needs
| | 02:57 | to be inside the domain.
| | 02:59 | If it's outside the domain, it will
just kind of like puddle up there on the
| | 03:02 | outside of the domain and look funky.
| | 03:05 | This needs to be part of
the Fluid system as well.
| | 03:08 | Go ahead and mark it as a Fluid.
| | 03:10 | Now it can also be an Inflow or an
Outflow, in which case, Inflow is like fluid
| | 03:15 | coming out of a faucet, and it just
flows out for a long period of time;
| | 03:19 | or it can be an Outflow which is like a
drain, and then the fluid drains out, or
| | 03:24 | it can just be fluid ball.
| | 03:26 | We can give the fluid ball some
Initial Velocity in the X Y or Z direction.
| | 03:31 | So if like this was a water balloon, we
can give it some Y direction like it's
| | 03:34 | being chucked across the room.
| | 03:35 | Lastly, it's always cool to have
something other than in a visible box for
| | 03:40 | the water to run into.
| | 03:41 | So we can let's say down here,
let's go ahead and add river stone.
| | 03:46 | So we can take an Uvsphere and
stretch it out in the X direction.
| | 03:53 | Maybe squash it a little bit in the Z
direction, and then put it at the bottom.
| | 04:04 | Also helps to, in top view
go ahead and add a Plain.
| | 04:09 | That will function as the floor or the table.
| | 04:12 | Let's say that this is on.
| | 04:13 | Go ahead and scale that up.
| | 04:19 | And from side view, make sure
it's down the bottom of the domain.
| | 04:22 | And then that way it will look
like it's hitting this plain.
| | 04:26 | To start simulation, we want to go
ahead and save our file and click Bake.
| | 04:31 | When you do that at the top of your
screen, you'll see a little Blender
| | 04:36 | icon right next to the scene, and it
will go from red to yellow to green as
| | 04:41 | it progresses through.
| | 04:42 | And it's computing the shape of the mesh.
| | 04:45 | That should be the fluid globule
for each frame of your animation.
| | 04:50 | Finally, when it's done then.
| | 04:52 | We can come back over here, go back to
frame 1, and when we zap back to frame 1,
| | 04:58 | the domain disappears like I promised,
and you are left with this fluid glob.
| | 05:04 | And as you go from frame to frame it
falls down, because it's under Gravity, and
| | 05:13 | hits the rock let's say and
splatters into different pieces.
| | 05:19 | The higher the Resolution,
the better quality results.
| | 05:23 | And you can rerun the simulation until
you get some really good results that
| | 05:26 | look accurate, and like that, down to
the microscopic level if you want, and
| | 05:32 | then when you have the results and
everything setup the way you wanted, then
| | 05:35 | you click Bake, and that performs then
the final simulation that you can then
| | 05:39 | use in your animation.
| | 05:40 | So that's the basics of settings
up a Fluid Simulation in Blender.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using boids to simulate swarms, schools, and flocks| 00:00 | Boids is a whole field of animal
behavioral studies and it's just a fascinating thing
| | 00:06 | that Blender is able to simulate,
it's able to simulate the intelligent
| | 00:10 | behavior of these particles.
| | 00:12 | Each of the dots that you see on your
screen is an actual particle and those
| | 00:17 | particles are being drawn by this
sphere that's running around there.
| | 00:22 | And the particles interact with each other.
| | 00:26 | So you have swarms of insects, you
have schools of fish, you have herds of
| | 00:32 | buffaloes, and in this case you have
seagulls flocking around the boat here
| | 00:38 | at the harbor.
| | 00:39 | So how do we set up boids?
| | 00:41 | Well, let's go and break it
down and I'll walk you through it.
| | 00:44 | First of all, you need a base from
which the birds will start, and so here
| | 00:49 | we have this cube, and we've just gone
ahead and assigned a new physic system, and
| | 00:54 | instead of Newtonian, we've clicked on Boids.
| | 00:56 | When we click Boids then we have a
set of controls here on this panel.
| | 01:02 | And what this is, is a bunch of rules
as to each particle as it flies around
| | 01:09 | or swims around or whatever.
| | 01:11 | What behavior takes
presence over other behaviors?
| | 01:16 | So here is the behaviors that you have.
| | 01:19 | Let's say you're walking
down on a crowded street.
| | 01:21 | First of all, you have the desire to
stay with the crowd, but avoid colliding
| | 01:26 | in to other people.
| | 01:28 | You have a certain goal that you are
trying to get towards, but you have to
| | 01:32 | navigate through this maze of people.
| | 01:34 | So a lot of swarms have a center, and
and people want to gravitate towards the center,
| | 01:38 | and then we have some velocities
involved. That you don't want to
| | 01:41 | go too much faster than the guy next to you.
| | 01:43 | Those kind of behaviors you can rank and
rate here and just by clicking the Move Up
| | 01:48 | or Move Down, you can move
that rule up or down in precedence.
| | 01:53 | And then set the overall general rating
of that rule, relative to all the other rules.
| | 01:59 | Boids works in three-dimensions.
| | 02:01 | As we walk around we can see that this
is actually a three-dimensional flock.
| | 02:06 | We can make it a lot simpler by
clicking only 2D and now the birds will only
| | 02:11 | operate and swarm around in two-dimensions,
and not actually fly up into the Z direction.
| | 02:17 | We can control how fast the birds
change direction and change speed here by
| | 02:25 | limiting or changing the Maximum
Velocity. Here we have set it at 10 units and
| | 02:28 | the Average Velocity is much less than that.
| | 02:31 | So that's means that they can really
speed up and take a couple of wing beats
| | 02:34 | and really get fast.
| | 02:36 | Laterally as well as tangentially how
fast they can bank to stay together in the flock,
| | 02:41 | and flocks can actually -- if
you try to scatter them, if the guiding
| | 02:47 | force changes too fast, then they will
actually fly off and get lost and not
| | 02:52 | become part of the flock anymore.
| | 02:54 | The Visualization settings
are pretty much the same.
| | 02:57 | You can draw them as whatever and in
this case, what I have done is I have
| | 03:01 | created the shape called a Bird.
| | 03:03 | It's just a very simple mesh shape.
| | 03:06 | We can probably click it over here.
| | 03:07 | Just select it and I can press C to--
oops, I'm going to press Ctrl+S to
| | 03:14 | take my cursor to it and then press C
to center in and now I can just zoom right in here.
| | 03:20 | And all I have done is I just sculpted
a simple little mesh shape that looks
| | 03:24 | like a little dove flying around.
| | 03:26 | And what happens then is for every
particle then, Blender takes that mesh shape
| | 03:31 | and makes a bird out of it.
| | 03:34 | And then the bird orients itself in
the direction in whichever the particle is going.
| | 03:39 | Coming back to the Particle System now,
each bird starts at a certain time.
| | 03:44 | In this case a flock when it first
takes off it needs time to coalesce, if you will,
| | 03:50 | and it just kind of weird thing to watch.
| | 03:52 | But when they are all sitting there on
the ground, they all kind of take off and
| | 03:55 | then they all kind of like figure out
who is the leader and where we are going
| | 03:58 | and all that kind of good stuff.
| | 04:00 | That takes about a second or so to do.
| | 04:03 | So I have started the actual
simulation at -30, so that by the time we get to
| | 04:08 | frame 1, the flock is all up in the air,
and everybody is swarming around, and
| | 04:13 | they have all kind of
figured out who the leader is.
| | 04:16 | Each of the birds is going to last for
1500 frames, which is well in excess of
| | 04:21 | the duration of the simulation, and
finally I wanted them randomly emitted from
| | 04:27 | this cube, so as if the birds were all
just kind of like sitting around on the
| | 04:31 | patio and all of a sudden
they just all wanted to take off.
| | 04:36 | You are going to have birds, smaller
than other birds as well, and then you can
| | 04:39 | combine this little reactor system so
that when the birds fly into the barn and
| | 04:43 | then inside the barn is reactor
system then even more birds fly out.
| | 04:47 | So how do we guide these birds?
| | 04:49 | And the answer is right here in
this object, which I have set up as a
| | 04:54 | force field.
| | 04:57 | And I have set this ball, just a
simple ball, and I have assigned it to be a
| | 05:01 | force field and it's the same kind of
field that we've talked about with all
| | 05:05 | the other particle systems.
| | 05:07 | Only I gave it a really strong strength,
so that it really can draw these birds
| | 05:12 | from the pretty far distance away.
They'll all be drawn towards it.
| | 05:17 | Then all I needed to do was just
move this around and to do that moving
| | 05:23 | around, I used all of our basic animation
techniques to go ahead and move the cube
| | 05:27 | and key different locations
showing down here in the IPO window as to
| | 05:33 | where this cube moves around.
| | 05:35 | So as it moves, it draws the birds and
you can kind of see as it's moving away,
| | 05:40 | see how these birds are
kind of drawn towards it.
| | 05:43 | And the ones out here going, "hey, I'm
getting away from the flock," and so those
| | 05:47 | boids rules come into play.
| | 05:48 | They turn around and they kind of
fly faster to try to catch up to the
| | 05:53 | center mass of the flock.
| | 05:55 | And then just about the time that
these birds start to overshoot this sphere,
| | 05:59 | this sphere moves so that they can now
bank around, and follow around and swarm
| | 06:06 | around just the same way I have seen birds do.
| | 06:09 | You know when they are getting
ready to go south for the winter.
| | 06:15 | We can see now that they start
going around, and they will eventually
| | 06:18 | circle around this sphere.
| | 06:21 | So that's how you can add birds and boids.
| | 06:24 | You'll see them all over
in different simulations
| | 06:27 | now that you know what to look for.
Feel free to experiment. There is a lot of
| | 06:30 | research papers on what makes up a
swarm and how is it controlled, but this is
| | 06:35 | how you can do it in Blender.
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7. RenderingUsing Render controls| 00:00 | The purpose of this video is to go
over rendering in Blender and what your
| | 00:04 | different options are.
| | 00:06 | The Render section over here
is in your Properties panel.
| | 00:11 | I'm going to go ahead and make this a
little bigger here, so we can see it.
| | 00:15 | So rendering is the process of taking
this CG image and/or from the Compositor
| | 00:21 | or the Sequencer, and
actually producing the final video.
| | 00:24 | So you have your choice first here
of the different kinds of renderers.
| | 00:28 | Now, Blender has been integrated
with what we call the Blender Internal
| | 00:33 | renderer, which is a scanline renderer,
as well as YafRay and now YafaRay, which
| | 00:39 | is a public domain rendering system
that is fairly integrated with Blender and
| | 00:44 | supports all of the different particle
systems and materials and the kinds of
| | 00:49 | lights and the effect that those lights have.
| | 00:51 | The lighting is handled a
little bit differently within YafRay.
| | 00:55 | So be prepared to have to come back
here and essentially make your scene pretty dark
| | 00:59 | before you use YafRay
to shoot all your photons.
| | 01:03 | But Blender has also been
integrated with RenderMan and Inkscape.
| | 01:07 | A vector based 2D sort of
renderer is also in the works.
| | 01:12 | Indigo.
| | 01:13 | There is Blendigo, there is
Sunflow, Cinema 4D, V-Ray...
| | 01:16 | I mean there is a lot of
different ones and I apologize if I missed
| | 01:19 | your favorite renderer.
| | 01:20 | But the point is that Blender
integrates with a lot of different renderers.
| | 01:25 | When you get into huge things, you
can also use a render farm as well and
| | 01:29 | have Blender installed on 10 or 20
computers, each rendering portions of the
| | 01:33 | final video.
| | 01:35 | So once you have those choices, then
you have three main components that
| | 01:38 | you need to set up.
| | 01:39 | The first of course is in the world
whether or not you are going to do
| | 01:42 | Radiosity, which is over here, and
whether or not you are going to do Ambient
| | 01:48 | Occlusion, which is set up over here.
| | 01:51 | Then once you start the rendering, you
have your choices of the output formats.
| | 01:56 | Blender supports a whole bunch
of static image formats as well as
| | 02:02 | containerized formats of video.
| | 02:05 | We have everything from PNGs and if
you render out an animation, it creates
| | 02:10 | what's called a PNG sequence.
| | 02:12 | If you are using PNG or Targa and like
that, you want to make sure that you set
| | 02:16 | RGBA on to write out the Alpha channel.
| | 02:21 | Coming back to also QuickTime, I
believe supports an Alpha channel.
| | 02:24 | We have AVI, JPEGs as well as a
whole bunch of Codecs that are installed
| | 02:28 | wherever Codecs happen to be set on your system.
| | 02:31 | If you choose AVI Codec, then you have
to come over here, and then select the
| | 02:36 | Codec that you want to use to encode your video.
| | 02:39 | Codec is a compressor-decompressor.
| | 02:41 | We have a whole bunch of presets here
for the size of the video that you want to
| | 02:46 | create, and we have everything from
Full HD to a PC, to PAL, NTSC for US
| | 02:53 | television, and for animations, you
need to set your frames per second.
| | 02:57 | 25 is the standard, 24 for film
and 30/1.001 for US broadcast TV.
| | 03:09 | You can also just do a quick render in
black and white if you want to as well.
| | 03:13 | When you do set up your rendering,
it's important to enable Ray tracing and
| | 03:16 | Shadows as well as Subsurface
Scattering if you are doing that.
| | 03:20 | OSA is Oversampling.
| | 03:22 | There are two kinds of
Oversampling supported in Blender.
| | 03:25 | One is normal Oversampling, and Anti
-aliasing, the other is Full Screen
| | 03:30 | Anti-aliasing, and that's enabled and
very useful if you are doing a huge render
| | 03:36 | with a lot of difference-depth, and
when you do that, you want to enable Save
| | 03:41 | Buffers, enable Full Sample.
| | 03:43 | When you do that, then this OSA becomes
FSA, and that takes the full screen and
| | 03:49 | does the jittering and the anti-
aliasing to smooth out the edges.
| | 03:53 | You also have Motion Blur
fully supported in Blender.
| | 03:57 | So as things are moving, Blender will
automatically calculate the previous frame
| | 04:02 | and the next frame, and then do a
blur calculation to blur moving objects.
| | 04:07 | Finally, for rendering large images on
modest PCs, you can break the render up
| | 04:12 | into parts, and this breaks it up into
16 parts, and then the render only has to
| | 04:18 | work on 1/16th of the image at a time,
and that enables you to render larger
| | 04:23 | images on a more modest PC.
| | 04:26 | We also have Fields rendering,
which is for interlaced fields.
| | 04:29 | We support both odd and even interlacing,
and of course, the all important, do
| | 04:34 | we want to render with a sky, do we
want to render with pre-multiplied images,
| | 04:38 | or do we want to render with keyed images?
| | 04:40 | Lastly, we have the Output panel,
and we want to type-in the name of the
| | 04:44 | file here.
| | 04:45 | A Double Slash indicates the
folder in which the Blend file is saved.
| | 04:51 | So that's very handy.
| | 04:52 | So very often, I'll do a //render\
and then that automatically creates a
| | 04:58 | subdirectory for me under wherever my
Blend file is called render and then all
| | 05:02 | of my movies or my frames go out to that folder.
| | 05:06 | The Back Buffer is used to load up
an image that I want to use as a matte
| | 05:10 | background and when I specify the
filename here, when I want to use that
| | 05:14 | background as my render, then I
just check here to enable that.
| | 05:19 | Blender also supports cartoon-style
edge rendering around all of your objects.
| | 05:24 | Here is where you set up the edge and
when you click Edge Settings, you can set
| | 05:27 | the color of the edge as
well as the intensity of it.
| | 05:32 | When you do, do a render, usually
it comes up in a separate window.
| | 05:36 | You can also have it go to an Image
Editor window and then you can indicate
| | 05:40 | which Image Editor or which window of
these four windows to use as the output.
| | 05:46 | So now when I'd click Render, what
it's doing now is it goes through and it
| | 05:56 | computes the motion blur, the
oversampling and everything like that and puts the
| | 06:01 | image over here in a window.
| | 06:02 | That saves having that Render Window
pop-up every time you do a render if
| | 06:06 | that gets annoying.
| | 06:07 | All |
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